Stop All The Clocks
by Eclectic Muse
Summary: When Jemma gets sucked into a parallel dimension, it's up to Fitz to get her back. The Jemma he finds, however, is not the Jemma he expected. Things get complicated. (AU based on the Doctor Who episode The Girl Who Waited)
1. Chapter 1

**bcfictionalboysarebetter** on Tumblr suggested a Fitzsimmons AU based on the Doctor Who episode The Girl Who Waited. Since I love the show (and especially the relationship between Amy and Rory) I thought I'd give it a go.

Massive thanks go to my wonderful betas **notapepper** and **StarryDreamer01** for all of their help and support. You guys rock.

-:-

In retrospect, Jemma should have realized the mission was doomed from the start.

Several weeks had passed since the utter disaster that was San Juan and since Skye had met her father and somehow acquired the ability to cause seismic tremors at will (and sometimes against her will). Several weeks since they had lost Trip.

Skye was taking it the hardest; she blamed herself for his death and wouldn't hear a word against it, no matter how much they tried to reason with her. It was her own cross to bear, she said, and the best way for her to deal with it was to learn to understand and control her new abilities.

They hadn't gotten very far on the understanding part. Without the obelisk and lacking any sort of sample of the mist or crystal that Skye had said it released, they had nothing to go on but conjecture. Jemma had taken blood and tissue samples and, after comparing them to samples left over from their time on the Bus, had concluded that there was definitely a difference in her cellular structure and DNA-but she couldn't explain it. With only human DNA to go on as a baseline, she could only describe it as human plus _extra_. Once it was determined that Skye's new abilities weren't immediately detrimental to her health, the focus had switched from understanding to control.

There wasn't much more they could do that Skye's training with May hadn't already accomplished, either. She tended to unwillingly cause small quakes and tremors if she grew overly tired or emotional, and in those times she had to rely on all the calming and meditation techniques May had taught her in order to regain control of herself and make the shaking stop. Eventually she could learn to properly use her abilities, but before that could happen she had to first accept them.

Utility would come in time, Jemma reasoned. Right now Skye's emotions-everyone's, really-were still too raw to even begin thinking about moving past, moving on. So everyone at the Playground became accustomed to the occasional rattling of tables and chairs, and made sure not to place breakable objects close to surface edges. The days began to slip by, one by one.

Jemma was working in the lab when she got a call to report to the Bus for a mission briefing. She set aside her current run of sample analyses as quickly as she could and shed her lab coat before heading to the hangar, her curiosity piqued. She knew May, Hunter, and Bobbi had just recently returned from doing a recon of a location Coulson believed might have a lead on information regarding the Kree, the alien race Skye had confirmed had ties to whatever it was she had now become. Maybe they had turned up some useful intel and Coulson was preparing them for a full-blown op.

As she approached the lowered ramp of the Bus, she could see that she was the last of the usual team to arrive. May was standing next to Coulson, apart from the rest of the group; they were talking quietly to themselves. Bobbi and Hunter were on the far left, while Skye and Mack stood in the center of the ramp. Standing off to Skye's right was Fitz. Jemma came quietly up between them, giving Fitz a small smile when he turned his head to look at her. His face was unreadable, eyes lingering on hers just a second too long, before he looked away again.

She swallowed and forced away the disappointment and resignation she knew was fighting to show on her face.

They had reached a fragile sort of détente upon coming back from San Juan. Fitz had left the lab to work in the garage with Mack just like he said he intended to, but he was no longer going out of his way to avoid her. He assisted her in the lab if required (which wasn't often as she might have liked) and he'd stay in the common area if she came in with a mug of tea. He wouldn't make up excuses to be anywhere but alone with her. She supposed she should have viewed it as a small victory of sorts, but it felt hollow. She knew it was on her for letting her hopes rise after the way he'd held her in San Juan, but there it was. She'd believed, for a moment, that extreme duress had caused Fitz to put aside all of the hurt and bitterness between them and let instinct take over. She'd still believed that deep down, at their core, they were still the same people who had been best friends for a decade and would always be there for one another.

So when Fitz never mentioned the incident again and went back to keeping his distance, she was faced with cold reality once more. He'd only grabbed onto her to keep her from going down the shaft after Trip, only pulled her back and held on because he didn't want to watch someone else needlessly die. Anything beyond that was just her wishful thinking.

Their friendship was damaged beyond repair. The knowledge that it was all her fault-that if she'd only made different choices, fought just a little harder, swum a little faster-threatened to suffocate her on the best of days. On the worst, it was all she could do to put up her front of false cheer and soldier on the way everyone expected her to.

Coulson clearing his throat brought Jemma's attention back to focus. "Now that you're all here, we can get started," he said. "As most of you know, we've got some information back from the recon mission that May led to Mississippi, and it-well, they found a lot more than they expected to." With a wry look, he nodded to Skye. She tapped the tablet she was holding a few times, and a holo display sprung to life in the center of the cargo bay. It showed a topographic map of a region covered in rolling hills, focusing in on a small series of caves burrowed into the side of one. Coulson nodded to May, and she took up the narrative.

"We thought this was going to be a simple scouting op," she said, pacing slowly before the map. "At worst, possibly a retrieval of some small artifact, something we could handle on our own to transport back here for further study. Unfortunately, what we found could not be moved." Skye tapped her tablet again and a photo popped up over the map. It showed a large device that was obviously mechanical in nature, with a dedicated console covered in buttons and switches, connected to what looked like a large, empty window frame. The frame was easily taller than an average human and wide enough for at least two to fit through. Pipes went from the console straight into the cave's stone floor, and even though the device was clearly made of some sort of metal, it almost looked as though it had grown organically from the cave floor itself. In her periphery, Jemma saw Fitz lean forward slightly, one hand coming up to rub a thumb at his jaw.

"Our best guess is that it's some sort of portal, or window-into what, we don't know," May was saying, pausing off to one side of the photo display. "But it's clearly very advanced tech, possibly even alien, and way beyond the resources we had."

"Which is why we're sending a full team in this time," Coulson added, nodding down at the assembled agents. "We need to get a full idea of what this device is and what it can do and, if necessary, neutralize it. It doesn't look like the sort of thing we want Hydra getting their hands on." He took a second to acknowledge the murmurs of assent amongst them. "I'll be running back end with Skye on comms. May, Bobbi, Hunter, you'll be securing the perimeter and keeping an eye out for anyone unfriendly. Fitz, Simmons, you've got full run on whatever this thing is. Figure it out. Mack, you're backup in case we need it." Coulson smiled tightly. "Any questions?"

One glance told Jemma that Fitz's shoulders had tensed up, but it wasn't him who raised a hand. It was Mack.

"Sir…you sure we need a full team for this?" He was asking what everyone else was thinking: that the last time they'd sent in a full team, they'd lost one of their own. The air palpably thickened.

Coulson didn't hesitate in replying, however. "I'm sure. Something of this size and possible power, we want to make sure we're prepared on all fronts." He nodded once. "Dismissed. We need to have wheels up in an hour."

That didn't leave them much time to get their equipment assembled. As everyone scattered in different directions to prepare, Jemma turned to Fitz. "I'll get the suits and some sample containers?" She tried to keep her voice as polite and professional as possible.

"Yeah," Fitz said quietly, eyes trained on the floor. "I'll get the D.W.A.R.F.s." Then he looked up and past her, to Mack. "Let's go."

"Lead the way, Turbo," Mack replied, and together they turned and walked into what had once been the Bus' lab to start digging through the equipment stacked there. Jemma watched them go, a sad, heavy sort of ache settling over her heart. It was commonplace now, that ache, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.

She allowed herself the briefest of moments to wallow before she sighed and straightened her shoulders. She wasn't of use to anyone if she was falling apart emotionally. Turning, she started back towards the base's lab to start collecting the things they'd need for the mission.

-:-

Once they had reached the caves and headed inside, Fitz didn't want to admit it-_wouldn't_ admit it, in fact, even if it was obvious-but he was feeling paranoid.

Missions hadn't had the greatest track record of running smoothly lately, and he couldn't shake the feeling that this one was yet another disaster waiting to happen. It had all the hallmarks of an op set up for failure: a mysterious device of unknown origin, as full a complement of tactical backup as they could get, a heightened sense of urgency, and the specter of Hydra hanging over their heads. Normally he didn't think he would be quite as nervous as he was now-he'd actually lost most of his fear of going into the field, even before he'd ended up on the bottom of the ocean-but…Jemma was involved.

Jemma, who was currently walking in front of him down a dimly-lit cave passage, wearing a hazard suit sans the head gear, one gloved hand trailing lightly over the cave wall next to her.

He knew Jemma was perfectly capable of taking care of herself; she'd proven that many times during the years they'd known each other, and especially in the past year. She didn't need, didn't _want_ him worrying over her. But he never had managed to shake the instinctive need to protect her. That hadn't changed, at least, even if everything else had. He didn't think it ever would change, either. As long as Jemma Simmons lived and breathed, his overwhelming priority was to make sure she was safe and cared for.

Even if he no longer fit into that equation.

Being without Jemma hurt, but being near her hurt even worse, so he'd chosen the path of least resistance. He couldn't stand to be around her, knowing that every time she looked at him all she saw was the broken shell of the man he used to be. She couldn't accept that the Fitz she wanted had died in that med pod and was never coming back. He felt like a failure in her eyes, and that somehow managed to hurt more than the frustration and the stuttered words and the shaking hands combined. He was no longer Jemma's equal-no longer her perfect match. And it killed him.

She was better off without him. Besides, even if she ever did come to accept that he was irrevocably changed, the yawning gulf of hurt and abandonment between them was too wide to ever be crossed again. She would always be wishing for someone he wasn't, and he didn't think he could ever come to fully open up and trust her again.

Their relationship was damaged beyond repair, and it was his fault. He'd confessed his feelings for her, so sure he was about to die, but Jemma had dragged him to the surface as damaged goods and then left him the first opportunity she had. She was so put off by the mere idea of him loving her that not even their friendship was worth salvaging.

He wished he'd never told her.

Sometimes, he even wished she'd left him in the med pod.

Ahead of him, Jemma's foot slipped on a slick spot of rock and she stumbled slightly. Fitz's free hand, the one not carrying the D.W.A.R.F. case, automatically twitched toward her but he stopped himself just short of reaching out. It was that damned instinct again. He just hoped that Mack, who was behind him, hadn't noticed.

"I don't like this," he muttered. His voice sounded unnaturally loud, bouncing off the walls of the narrow tunnel they were in.

"We'll be fine," Jemma said, ever the optimist. She'd regained her footing. "It's just a cave, Fitz, not even a dangerous one."

He envied her surety. How did she stay so calm all the time? Suddenly, his temper flared. "Yeah, because being in a cave w-worked out so well the last time we were in one," he snapped, far harsher than he meant to.

Jemma didn't reply or even look back at him, but it was impossible to miss the way she flinched. He could feel Mack's disapproval too, burning into the back of his head in silent judgment. Briefly closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She hadn't deserved that; she'd only been stating facts in an attempt to soothe him. He hated himself for it.

They walked in silence for another moment. "I think what Simmons meant," Mack said at length, "is that we won't have to go digging this time around. We can see what we're getting into. No going in blind."

If anyone had a right to be nervous going into this, Fitz thought, it was Mack. He'd been the one to go in blind at San Juan, and he'd paid a price for it. As much as it bothered him to admit it to himself, Mack's reassurance went a lot farther than Jemma's.

"Exactly," Jemma said. She was back to being almost cheerful, as if his words had never affected her. His temper swelled again, but before he could reply, the passage in front of her evened out and widened into a large chamber; May, who had been leading the way, stepped to the side as Jemma, Fitz, and Mack entered and got a look around them.

It was a large room, maybe slightly smaller than the common area back at the Playground and just as tall, and was a dead end to the passage they'd gone down. It was obviously man-made-the lines and surfaces of the room were too smooth and even to be anything device from the mission briefing photo took up most of the back half of the it; the pictures hadn't really done it justice. It looked even larger and more complex in person. Fitz could only begin to guess what all the levers and dials meant, and what function the device served.

In the corner, May was alerting Coulson and Skye via comm that they'd reached the device. Next to him, Mack was giving the device a thoughtful look while Jemma set her case down and double-checked that her gloves were on all the way. It had been decided that she and Fitz, having the most cause to get close to the device, would wear protective gear from the neck down, just in case. They didn't want to find out the hard way (again) what consequences touching it would have.

Fitz set the D.W.A.R.F. case down and opened it, taking out the two trifold tablets and handing one to Jemma. She took it from him without comment, slipping her hand under the strap as he did the same, and tapped a few commands in. One by one, the D.W.A.R.F.s hummed to life and rose up out of the case, buzzing away toward the device at their command.

"I'll stay here at the entrance and keep watch," May said, nodding toward the passage they'd entered from. "Skye and Bobbi aren't reporting anyone else in the area, but just in case…"

Fitz nodded at her and turned back to his tablet, frowning at the data that had just started to come in. He directed one of the drones to fly closer to the base of the main console of the device. "I'm reading some sort of-of energy-thing-"

Jemma leaned in to get a closer look at his tablet. "Internal power source?" she supplied.

"Yes," he said, inwardly cursing the jumble of words in his head. "Yeah-that. But it's dormant. Not on."

"You think there might be an 'on' switch, then?" Jemma mused.

Mack had come to stand behind them, looking over their shoulders at both their tablets, then over to the device. "Would we want to hit it if there was?"

"Only one way to find out," Fitz said slowly, and walked forward. Tapping at his tablet again, he instructed the closest drone to give him an x-ray scan of the inside of the console in order to try and determine where the bulk of the power source was, and what it was connected to. A minute later, he had it. "Um-right here." He pointed to a large, white circular button on the right side of the console interface. "That's-that's the 'on' switch."

Then he looked up at them, his lips pursed. Surely it couldn't be that easy?

May simply raised her eyebrows in a silent question. Mack shook his head and held his hands up. "Hey, you're the man with the gloves on," he said.

But Jemma, her free hand raised almost as if to reach out to him, frowned and looked down at her tablet. "Wait, let me finish this one scan…" She looked up towards a drone that was flying over the top of the console before going higher to skirt the edge of the empty frame. After a few seconds, her tablet beeped and she gave a firm nod of her head. "Right. I'm not picking up any other potential energy sources and the structural integrity of the device itself, while made out of an alloy the D.W.A.R.F.s don't recognize, seems to be solid. I don't think it's a weapon." Her eyes met his. "Go ahead, Fitz."

Giving them one last look, Fitz turned to the console and pressed the button.

A deep, reverberating hum filled the room as multiple lights and buttons blinked to life on the console. Fitz instinctively took a step back as May, Mack, and Jemma all took a step forward. A high-pitched whine had come in over the top of the hum and other assorted noises of what he could only imagine was a machine or computer booting up, and that worried him, but after several tense seconds it faded away, leaving just the hum.

But nothing else happened.

There was no loud bang, no sudden beams of energy, nothing shooting at them. The empty frame connected to the machine remained just that way-empty. Confused, Fitz blinked at it a few times before turning to look back at the others. They looked just as confused as he did.

Suddenly, Coulson's voice sounded in his ear. "What was all that noise?"

Fitz jumped slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jemma startle just the same. He'd forgotten about the comm in his ear. "Oh-uh-I, um-I turned the device on, sir."

"That's all you did? Turn it on?"

"Yeah-yes, sir," Fitz said, swallowing and looking back to his tablet. The drones were sending a whole new flood of data across the screen. "I think. It's not doing anything."

"We still don't know what its purpose is," Jemma rushed to add, taking another step toward him. She was looking quickly back and forth between her tablet and the machine. "But based on the readings I'm getting I think it's safe to say it's not human in origin."

Fitz nodded even though Coulson couldn't see him. "Keep up the good work, guys," Coulson said. "And-try not to blow anything up."

Jemma laughed slightly at the director's attempt at levity before coming over to join Fitz "Right, sir. Okay, let's see what we can pick up now…"

She seemed to be directing her drones toward the empty frame, while he concentrated back on the console. He glanced at the readouts on his tablet, did a double-take and looked again, frowning and ducking his head to get a better look. "That...that can't be right."

"Hmm?" Jemma was inspecting what looked to be a small screen connected to the left side of the console on a pivoting arm.

"The-the energy source," he said, briefly laying a gloved hand flat on the side of the console. He could feel it vibrating lightly beneath his palm. "It's…" He frowned again. "The data I'm getting suggests it's a-a plasma core."

Jemma's head immediately snapped over to look at him in disbelief. "But that's not possible."

Fitz swallowed a frustrated sigh. "Yes, I _know_ that, Jemma, but-"

Mack crossed his arms. "Wait. You mean plasma energy, like the theoretical stuff?"

Fitz nodded. "Yeah." He looked over to May, who still had a questioning look on her face. "It's all theory-guesswork-it, it doesn't even exist yet-"

"-Because human technology hasn't advanced far enough yet to even be capable of it," Jemma finished. "It's just a hypothesis." He nodded at her, almost gratefully; the words had started to slip away from him and, just for a second, they'd been in sync. She gave him a very small smile as something that was unmistakably warmth bloomed in her eyes.

He shoved away the love that flared in his chest in response. There wasn't room for that, not now, not ever. He turned to face May. "It means this machine, whatever it is, is-um-we didn't make it. Humans didn't. Not without-without help, anyway."

May nodded, absorbing all this. "Can you think of any way to tell who _did_ make it?"

"Fitz, come look at this," Jemma murmured. She appeared not to have heard May speak; when he turned back to her, Fitz saw her gingerly prodding at the screen she'd been looking at earlier. "This screen...it has a display of some sort."

"What?" He walked over to stand just behind and off to the side of her. Sure enough, the screen-which before had looked like a rectangular pane of framed glass similar in size to their tablets-was now lit up with the image of an empty room. It was nondescript, long and narrow, with plain white walls and no visible furniture or decoration. A single closed door was set into the far wall. Without thinking, Fitz reached around Jemma to tap at the screen with one finger. It didn't react to his touch.

If his sudden closeness made her uncomfortable, Jemma didn't show it. She turned her head slightly in his direction. "Do you think it's just an image, or a video link?" She pulled the screen a little closer to them.

"Hard to-um, hard to tell." He tapped the screen again. The image was slightly distorted around the edges and fritzed slightly at random, but without any moving objects in view it was impossible to tell. "Let me get one of the D.W.A.R.F.s to-"

He was interrupted by a sudden rush of sound coming from the console, followed by a loud pinging noise. Before they had a chance to react, the empty frame next to them sparked with a burst of bright white light.

-:-

Jemma jerked backward into Fitz as both of them raised a hand to shield their eyes. When the light faded, the frame was filled with what looked like a thin sheet of lightly rippling water, the image of the room on the small screen projected onto it.

"Woah, woah," Fitz muttered as his fingers wrapped around her arm, tugging her back a few steps. Looking behind her, she saw that both May and Mack had ICERs out, held up at the ready. Turning back to the frame, she swallowed and consulted her tablet again. "Well, I think that probably answers _that_ question," she said, a faint note of anxiety creeping into her voice.

"What's that?" Coulson asked over the comm.

"Almost definitely a-a portal," Fitz answered, tapping rapidly at his tablet. Three of the drones flew over to buzz around the frame. "To some room, somewhere. Exactly where is anyone's guess."

Coulson's reply was immediate. "Do not engage," he said. "Don't go through it, don't touch it, and _don't_ let anything come through it."

"Copy that," May said tersely, taking a few steps toward the center of the room, ICER still raised.

"Fitz, are you getting anything on this?" Jemma was focused on her tablet again.

He shook his head. "No, not really. Can't get a reading yet on any-any-what's on the other side. But there's been a _massive_ increase in power. The energy spike is off the charts."

Curious, Jemma walked away to go around the other side of the frame. She could see straight through the portal and the image of the room; Fitz was visible straight across from her, blurry and indistinct, but still there. "This is incredible," she said, unable to hide her excitement despite her slight worry. "Imagine all the possibilities of where this might go! It could be all the way across the world, or to another planet. It could even be to another dimension." She came back to stand right in front of it. "We just need to find a way of detecting where it goes without actually going through it."

Fitz frowned at his tablet. "Give me a few more m-minutes with the D.W.A.R.F.s and I might be able to."

As if on cue, there was the sound of a distant, muffled explosion.

"What the hell was that?" Coulson and Mack asked, almost at the same time.

Bobbi's voice came over the comm, short and clipped. "Hydra. Late to the party for once."

Jemma turned to look at Fitz, eyes wide. He stared back for a second before blinking. "Right. Time to go," he said, and turned to go back to the D.W.A.R.F. case just as Hunter came skidding in.

"Bloody fucking Hydra," he gasped, out of breath. "Can't we have something go right for once, just once?"

May was already turning to flank him, both of them raising their pistols to aim down the passageway. "Would be nice, wouldn't it?" Mack asked. His ICER was up too, but he was staying by the equipment cases. Fitz was kneeling next to him, reaching up to catch the first drone as it flew toward him.

Jemma hadn't moved. "Fitz, I've almost got a lock on these portal readings," she said quickly, fingers flying over her tablet. "I just need one more minute."

"No time, Jemma." Fitz put the second the drone back into the case.

Bobbi ran in just as another explosion sounded outside. "That _might_ slow them down just a little," she said, flipping her staves in her hands. "The rest of them we'll just have to bottleneck here. There's not a lot of them; I don't think they expected us to already be here."

Fitz had all of the drones inside the case now, save the one that Jemma still had flying near the portal frame. He gestured with his hands for her to come over, but she ignored him. "I'm almost done-"

"_Jemma_." His voice had taken on an urgent tone, the one he got when he was stressed. Standing, Fitz ran to her and pulled her tablet from her hands, jamming a finger on it as he turned to run back to the case. The remaining drone followed him.

Jemma flushed hot with indignation. "Fitz!"

Suddenly a spray of bullets hit the stone wall across from the passage opening and ricocheted off in several different directions. May, Hunter, and Bobbi all ducked and scrambled to one side while Fitz swore as he snapped the D.W.A.R.F. case shut. There was a split second where Jemma ducked too and her flight instincts kicked in; but because she was out in the open she hesitated, unsure where the bullets were flying-one pinged off the frame right next to her-and that indecision combined with ducking made her stumble. Her arms pinwheeled wildly and she cried out as she tried to regain her balance. One arm hit the portal and a burst of tingles shot through her body.

But she couldn't stop herself. She had one second to hear Fitz shouting her name, terrified, before the room tilted and she was falling, falling, falling back into and through the portal.


	2. Chapter 2

"_JEMMA!"_

Fitz was on his feet and sprinting for the portal before he had even fully processed what happened. He heard yelling behind him, and more gunfire, but it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Jemma had been standing there a second ago, and now she wasn't, and they had no idea where she was now or if she was safe. If he could get to the portal, he could see-

A strong arm grabbed him around the middle, pulling him back.

He fought against it, struggled, his feet sliding on the stone floor, but the arm was stronger. In the distance, he could hear Mack shouting.

"Turbo! Man, stop! You need to get down. _Fitz!_"

Then he was being pushed down to his knees. The world suddenly came rushing back in: time went to normal speed, sound got louder, he was aware of his surroundings. But the blind panic remained.

"I have to get Jemma," he choked out, starting to stand. The white room beyond the portal still looked empty; that couldn't be good. Mack threw his arm out to keep Fitz back again as more bullets ricocheted off the wall and flew past them.

"You can't do that if you get shot." Mack turned to look at the cave passage. May and Bobbi were taking out a Hydra soldier who had managed to get into the room proper while Hunter traded fire with more that they couldn't see. "We need to make it out of here alive first."

Taking cover behind Mack, Fitz sank numbly down against the D.W.A.R.F. case, feeling useless and frustrated and _terrified_. Jemma was gone. They were under attack. Jemma was gone, and the only way to get to her was through a machine they didn't understand. Jemma was _gone_.

Just then, a stray bullet hit the machine console, making it explode in a shower of sparks. A second later, the portal image distorted sharply before blinking out, leaving the frame empty again. Fitz jumped back up to his feet as he cried out in horror.

Bobbi looked back at the machine before turning and charging down the passage, her jaw set. After a few more gunshots and several loud thuds, silence finally fell over the cave. A moment later, Bobbi walked back in.

"All clear?" May asked, already edging toward the passage.

"All clear," Bobbi confirmed. Hunter slumped in relief. Fitz took that as his cue to run for the machine to assess the damage.

"What happened down there?" This time it was Skye coming over the comm instead of Coulson. "All we heard was a lot of yelling and guns. Is everyone okay?"

He was aware of May looking over to him. "Small Hydra ambush," she said. "Might have been an advance party. We…lost Simmons."

"What do you mean, you _lost_ her?" Skye cried.

"She went through the-the portal." Fitz's eyes were raking over the console, looking from the cluster of switches that had been blown off by the bullet to the power button, which was still lit. "Fell through trying to-to, um, dodge some gunfire."

Skye's response was a long moment in coming. "_Shit_."

"You're telling us," Hunter mumbled.

"You can get her back, though, right?" Skye asked, a note of hysteria rising in her voice. "Get her to come back through that portal or whatever it is, or go through yourself and get her?"

"We can't," Fitz bit back. His stomach lurched as the magnitude of what had happened finally started to hit, and for a second he feared he might be sick. "The-the m-machine got-got-it-"

Mack, sensing he was about to seriously start spiraling, came over to stand next to him. "Deep breath, Turbo."

Fitz squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his hands into fists. He was stressed and panicking and his head was a jumble of half-forgotten words, and he would be of absolutely no help to Jemma this way. _Jemma. Focus on Jemma._ Forcing himself to take a deep breath and let it slowly out went a small way toward easing the frantic thudding of his heart.

"The device took a hit and went offline," Bobbi said, filling in for him. "Fitz is looking to see how much damage was done."

He shook his head, eyes still closed. "Not. Not offline." He reached out and thumped a fist against the console. It was still humming. "P-Power's still on."

"Okay. Power's still on, but the portal's down." It was Coulson again; Fitz imagined that Skye had walked away from the comm for some emergency meditation. "Fitz, Mack, can you get it back up and running?"

"Yes. Maybe. _Yes_." Honestly, realistically, he didn't know. But _yes_ was the only option he allowed himself to think about, because _yes_ was the only way of getting Jemma back. He opened his eyes. "I just need…I need…" He snapped his fingers.

"Tools?" Mack suggested. Fitz nodded. "D.W.A.R.F.s?" When Fitz nodded again, he nodded back and moved away toward their cases.

"Okay." May was taking charge. "I'm heading back to the Bus to clear our path of any more surprises. Bobbi, help me get these Hydra soldiers out of here and then take point outside the cave. Hunter, stay here with Fitz and Mack." Hunter sketched a small salute at her as both she and Bobbi turned to pick up the one soldier who had fallen inside the room, carrying him out.

Fitz kept his attention on the console. His hands were shaking badly as he ran his fingers over the shattered buttons, trying to see if there was a way to pry the top panel of the console off. When Mack came back with a toolbox and handed him a flat-head screwdriver, his hands only shook worse. Growling in frustration, he set the screwdriver down before ripping his gloves off and flinging them across the room toward the D.W.A.R.F. case. He reached for the screwdriver again, but Mack held out a hand to stop him.

"Woah, Turbo," he cautioned. "What happened to 'no touching the machine'?"

Fitz pushed his hand away. "We know what it does now," he muttered irritably. "No sense in-in not." He picked the screwdriver back up, but when his hand kept shaking enough to make the tool visibly wobble, he sighed and turned and gave it to Mack. "Here. You-you see if you can get the top off. I'm just going to-" He pointed back at the D.W.A.R.F. case. "Yeah."

It chafed, being unable to handle the console, but Fitz realized he'd need to accept the hit to his pride if he wanted to get the machine repaired as quickly as possible. Opening the case, he got his trifold tablet back out and powered up a few of the drones. While Mack worked on getting the panel off, he could do more scans of the inside of the console to check for possible damage to the power core and anything else they couldn't see.

As the drones buzzed over to the machine to start working, he went to the side to look at the small screen attached to the console. It was still lit up with the image of the white room, though the interference-if that's what the periodic distortions and fritzes were-was worse now. The room still looked empty. Swallowing down the dread rising within him, he went to look back at his tablet, but before he could a dark shape moved across the screen. He startled. "What the-?"

Mack looked up from where he had a corner of the console panel pulled away. "What is it?"

Fitz pointed at the screen just as the dark shape crossed the screen from the opposite direction. "Look."

Unable to contain his curiosity, Hunter came to peer over Fitz's shoulder. "Is that…?"

The object was blurred and fuzzy around the edges, moving rapidly from point to point around the room, sometimes lingering in one spot, sometimes going out of sight. It seemed to hover most often near the door set into the far wall or closer to whatever was capturing the video (and Fitz was certain that was what it was now, a video link). He couldn't be certain, but the closer to the camera the shape got, the more it began to take on a distinct shape.

A distinctly _human_ shape.

Almost like footage of a person in motion, rapidly sped up.

The dread in the pit of his stomach swelled again.

"I…don't know," he said, eyes fixed to the screen.

"Why is she moving so fast?" Hunter, at least, was running with the assumption that the shape was Jemma. "That can't mean anything good."

It really couldn't. Half-formed theories and possibilities swept through his mind, but he couldn't grasp on to any of them. He let out a short huff of breath. "Right. Okay. Let's-let's-" He tore his eyes away from the shape on the screen to look at the data readout streaming across his tablet. "Mack, how's that panel coming?"

"It's coming," Mack grunted. He'd used the screwdriver to pry up the one corner he'd managed to peel away, but the metal was too dense for much more than that. He bent to retrieve a laser cutter from the toolbox and switched it on. "This should really get things going though."

Fitz nodded before consulting his tablet again. "Not seeing any diff-any changes in the power core, so…that's good. Those buttons aren't connected dir-directly to it. And taking that panel off shouldn't mess it up." He mentally cursed himself for his inability to use more technical terms. A glance at the screen and the maybe-Jemma shape still moving around on it had him cursing everything else. If what he thought was correct, they had to hurry.

They settled into some semblance of a groove. After Mack finally got the top panel off and both he and Fitz got a look at the extremely complicated-looking circuitry inside, Fitz instructed him as best he could on what to do when Mack's knowledge hit a wall. He kept the drones monitoring the power core, staying alert for any energy fluctuations. It probably wasn't the wisest decision, working on the machine while it was still on, but Fitz was afraid if they turned it off completely they would never get it back on, and then Jemma might be lost to them forever.

Hunter offered up the occasional quip or dry observation, having stationed himself as the unofficial monitor of the screen. Mack seemed to appreciate it, but it just made Fitz feel even tenser. He knew it was the other man's way of coping (or avoiding), but how anyone could even attempt humor right now was beyond him.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed when he heard footsteps approaching down the stone tunnel. They looked over to see May come into the room, followed by Skye.

"We're clear of Hydra for now," May said. "But I don't like this. There could be more at any moment. How's the progress here?"

Fitz sighed. "Not good. The b-bullet didn't damage the power core, so it's still on, but we don't know what any of-of these buttons and switches do. If that's what turned the portal off. Or if they affect it at all."

Skye had come to stand close to him. "Coulson thought I might be able to help," she said quietly. "I know I'm not up on all the tech and gadgets and stuff like you are, but who knows. There might be code in there somewhere."

He couldn't smile right now, not even for Skye, but he managed a slight nod of his head. She accepted it for what it was and nodded back.

"Plus, there's this," Hunter said, bringing their attention back to the screen. The dark shape was still visible moving around the white room, but it had started going offscreen for longer intervals. Fitz didn't want to think about why. "We think it might be Simmons."

"How?" May asked.

"Well…it only appeared a-after Jemma went through the portal," Fitz explained. "And we didn't see any-anything else come in the room. So." He licked his lips. "It might be her, but for some reason the video's…sped up."

"Why?" Skye was frowning as she moved to get a closer look.

"No clue," Mack said, switching off the flashlight he'd been using to look inside the console. "We're still trying to get this fixed."

Suddenly the machine shuddered before the low-level hum it had been emitting grew louder. Everyone jumped and started to back away, but by the time it made a loud pinging noise Fitz had recognized it as the same sound it had made before, which meant-

He turned to look just as the large frame flashed a bright white light and the portal flickered back to life, rippling gently as it filled up the empty space of the frame.

His heart leapt into his throat when he saw Jemma on the other side, standing near the door. She turned just as the portal surface evened out, her eyes growing wide, and then she was running toward them. Not even aware he was moving, Fitz rushed to meet her.

But just as they both reached the portal, a loud, ominous noise came from the console and the portal blurred before snapping back into focus, the edges glowing an angry red. Both Fitz and Jemma jumped back as if they'd been shocked. Behind him, Hunter and Skye took a few cautious steps closer.

"Fitz!" Jemma's voice was slightly muffled, as if they were hearing it from underwater. She was wringing her hands.

"Jemma, thank _god_, are you-"

"Where have you _been_?"

Fitz stopped, gaping at her for a second. "What-what do-_what_? The machine, it broke-" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the console. "We've been trying to f-fix it-"

"I've been here for a week!"

"A _week_?" Fitz and Hunter cried in horrified unison, just as Skye shrieked "_What_?"

It was only then that they fully took in Jemma's appearance: she was no longer in her protective suit, just the jeans and blouse she'd been wearing underneath it. Her eyes were wide and wild, and her hair was messy as if she'd spent a great deal of time tugging at it and running her hands through it. And she was visibly upset.

Fitz's mind was an avalanche of competing thoughts and sentences mixed with a renewed panic. "Wait-how-okay." He briefly squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Where is _here_, Jemma? Are you okay? Hurt?"

Jemma looked behind her before turning back to face them, pressing her lips down into a thin line. "I'm fine. And I'm not sure where _here_ is, exactly, I've not left this room much for fear that I'd miss the portal opening back up. There's another empty room before this one, and then an empty corridor that leads to who knows where."

"And you haven't seen or heard anything else? Is the room you're in now empty too?" Skye asked.

Jemma shook her head. "I haven't seen anyone, no. And all that's here is another device like the one you have." She paused, looking away uncomfortably. "Well…not quite. It's got the console and large frame that yours does-" She pointed to the frame in front of her. "-but it's not got any of the buttons or switches save for the one that turns it on."

"So it's a one-way trip," Fitz murmured. "Or, at least…you can only control the de-where it goes from here." He considered the idea that, with the console damage, they were extremely lucky the portal had stayed connected to where Jemma was.

"Wait, wait," Hunter said suddenly, stepping closer. "If you've been there for a week, and you haven't really left that room, how are you-you know." He gestured vaguely at her. "How are you even alive? What are you eating over there?"

Jemma's eyes widened slightly, as if she'd hadn't considered that yet. "I…I don't know," she said with a frown. "I just…haven't felt hungry."

Fitz was thinking furiously. A glance at the screen attached to the console confirmed one theory-it was now showing exactly what they were seeing in the portal, Jemma in real time. So if the video link was current, and what they had seen before was indeed Jemma moving around the room at a rapid pace, and she had been there a week while for them it had only been…

He glanced at his wristwatch. "How long's it been here since she-s-since she went through?"

Skye hummed, checking her own watch. "Um…about an hour, I think?"

A terrible hypothesis was forming in his head, with a vaguely nauseous feeling to accompany it. "Okay. Okay…Jemma, before, when you said-that it could be a portal to anywhere, even another di-di-place. Another-"

"Another dimension?" Jemma asked.

He snapped his fingers once. "Yes. That. What if…and I know this is crazy…what if it _is_. Another dimension. One where time…time moves faster."

Jemma went still. He could feel everyone's eyes on him, and resisted a grimace as he felt heat start to crawl up his neck. "It's the only reason I've got f-for why so much time has passed for you," he added.

"And it would explain why I haven't been hungry," she said, nodding slowly. He could see understanding spark to life in her eyes, the gears in her head turning as she started to put things together. "If time really is compressed here, and my body is set to the pace where you are, on Earth, I could go for longer periods without food."

"That sounds like the stuff of science fiction," Mack said, a bit lamely. "How do we know it's right?"

"We don't," Jemma replied, as if she were discussing the results of an experiment. "But it's all we've got to go on right now. It's all theory, really, quantum physics-there was an elective course on it back at the Academy. It's more Fitz's field of expertise than mine."

_Was_, Fitz thought darkly. He was already struggling to remember most of the concepts.

"Well, that's great, but how does that help you get back?" Skye gestured at the portal and its red edges. "What happened when it first opened? You looked like it zapped you or something."

Worry had started to edge back into Jemma's expression. "It did. When I got too close the machine sounded an alarm and it felt like I'd received an electrical shock. Was it the same for you, Fitz?" When he nodded, her face clouded further. "It must be from the damage on your end. Here, let me try-" She took a step forward, reaching out, but the warning tone blared again and she flinched back.

"Yeah, I don't think it likes you," Hunter said.

Jemma took a deep breath. "You'll have to fix it on your end, then. There's nothing I can do from here."

Fitz could tell she was close to unraveling; she was twisting her hands together again, fidgeting, her lips pursed. He could only imagine what she must have been thinking, alone there for an entire week. Something surged in his chest then, and he turned to hastily hand his tablet to Skye.

"Look, Jemma," he said firmly, looking back at her and taking a step forward. "We-we're going to figure this out. Yeah? You just-you stay there, and I'll fix it." Not caring that the others were watching, he raised a faintly trembling hand to hover, palm flat, as close to the portal's surface as he dared-close enough to feel the fine hairs on his arm prickle and raise. In his mind's eye he was no longer in the cave, but rather back on the Bus, his hands pressed against the glass doors of the lab as he watched Jemma fall away from him into the sky. The space between them now felt just as impenetrable as it had then, and he felt just as helpless and desperate, but his determination was the same too. Suddenly all of the hurt and pain that had existed between them since he woke from his coma felt very small. It was still there, of course, but he loved her more than that. That hadn't changed either. "Jemma," he said again, quieter. "I'm going to get you back."

Her eyes met his then, and the emotion in them made his breath congeal in his throat. There was vulnerability there, as much as she had ever let him see, and fear and trust and above all, something else he couldn't define that made his heart constrict. Slowly, she raised a hand to mirror his on her side of portal.

His world had narrowed down to just the two of them and their hands, close enough to touch yet so far away. "I'm going to get you back," he repeated.

Jemma swallowed once, licked her lips, then opened her mouth to speak.

But the portal flickered once and blinked back out before she could.

"No-!" he heard Skye cry behind him. Hunter swore loudly. Breathless with shock and dismay, Fitz spun to look back at the console. Mack was backing away from it, hands raised.

"I didn't touch it, man," he said, eyes wide. "I swear. It wasn't me."

Fitz wanted to scream. "Then what-how did-_why-_-?" He started pacing, fists clenching and unclenching; his hope had been snatched away and he was dangerously close to a full-blown panic attack.

"She's still there, mate, look," Hunter said, pointing at the screen. Just like before, there was a dark, fuzzy blob moving around the white room, but this time it seemed to be staying closer to the camera.

"But-that means-time-fast." It was the most he could get out. Stopping mid-pace, Fitz shut his eyes and forced himself to take two long, slow breaths. "Time's sped back up for her."

"We need to get this machine working _now_," May said. It was the first time she'd spoken in awhile. "We can't leave her there any longer than she already has been."

"Um…" Skye was looking at her wristwatch with a frown. "We might not have a choice."

The glare Fitz gave her could have melted steel. "What?"

She looked at him apologetically. "Okay, so, this is just a theory, like everything else. But, I noticed the time when you guys were attacked and the portal first came on. It was right at the top of the hour, two o'clock on the nose. And when it came back on just now, I said it had been about an hour since Simmons fell through." She raised her wrist. "It's ten after three now, and the portal couldn't have been open for more than ten minutes. What if...and like I said, it's just a theory...what if it's on a timer?"

Fitz mulled it over. It made sense, somewhat, but he didn't like where it was headed.

"So the machine getting shot earlier didn't close the portal?" Mack asked. "It just closed on its own?"

Skye shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Maybe. But let's say it opens up once an hour, for just a few minutes."

"Well, that certainly gives us a deadline to get it fixed," May said tightly. "One hour."

"But-" Fitz looked despairingly at the screen. "It'll be another _week_ for her."

"Look, I don't like it either." May folded her arms across her chest. "But Simmons is a good agent. She's capable. She can take care of herself until we get this fixed. Get the portal working first, then see if we can switch it to manual."

Logically, Fitz knew all that. He knew Jemma would be fine, as long as she stayed in that room and waited. It was just the thought of her having to in the first place, alone and cut off from help, that he didn't like. Standing around worrying was wasting precious time, though.

"Right." He turned to Skye to take his tablet back, then nodded at both her and Mack. "Okay. Let's do this."

Once they actually got started, it wasn't as difficult as he'd feared. It appeared that the hit the console had taken had either switched off or disabled the affected buttons, but hadn't destroyed the connections. Mack fashioned some new button faces with bits of metal taken from the console panel they'd removed and soldered them back on. Fitz put the D.W.A.R.F.s in monitoring mode to keep an eye on the energy readings again. Skye, with Hunter's help, discovered that the small screen was actually detachable from its pivot arm and could be carried around like a tablet, still fully functional. May kept Coulson and Bobbi updated on their progress over the comm.

By the time Mack had finished replacing all the buttons and set them so that the energy flow matched that of the original settings one of the drones had recorded, they had five minutes left. Fitz sighed heavily and resisted the urge to start pacing again. Instead he looked at Skye, who was holding the screen in her hands, knuckles gone white from gripping it too hard. The shadow that was Jemma had disappeared from view some time ago, but he refused to let his thoughts travel down that road. She was just out of view, he told himself. Maybe she was sitting down, or she was sleeping.

As the clock ticked toward the top of the hour, they all found themselves gathering around the portal frame, tension high in the air.

When the timer on his tablet beeped and the machine's noise revved up, Fitz let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. The console pinged, followed by the expected flash of light from the frame, and then the portal was open again. This time it looked just as it had at first, the edges glowing blue instead of red. Beside him, Skye let out a breath too.

After a few seconds had passed and Jemma hadn't appeared, Fitz swallowed. "Jemma?" he called out.

Silence. The room remained empty.

Skye leaned forward. "Simmons?"

His panic and worry had dimmed down to a low-level roar as they worked, but now it was rushing back up to slam him in the chest. "Jemma?" he called again, louder.

On his other side, May shifted slightly. "The door's open."

Forcing himself to focus, Fitz saw that it was. The door on the far end of the white room was wide open. And there was still no sign of Jemma. He looked at May, then turned to look at Skye. Her face said everything he knew, but didn't want to acknowledge.

Jemma was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

It was a tense walk back to the Bus.

Mack was leading the way, followed by Fitz and Skye, with Hunter and Bobbi bringing up the rear. May had volunteered to stay behind and keep watch on the portal, updating them as needed. No one was speaking. They were a little over halfway back but, even though they were moving as quickly as they could, to Fitz it felt like it was taking them ages.

His mind was buzzing white noise. He could barely think straight, could barely _see_ for how agitated and distraught he was. His heart was screaming that they were wasting time, that every second Jemma stayed in the other dimension was a second too long, but logically...logic was taking its time to kick in.

They had almost had to drag him from the cave. Once they'd realized that Jemma was no longer in the white room, Fitz had immediately tried to cross through the portal himself. Skye and May had stopped him, but he'd struggled and shouted so much that Mack had had to restrain him. May refused to let him go through without any sort of tech or support, without any backup, without any way of keeping in contact once the portal closed again-without knowing what had caused Jemma to leave the room. She wasn't going to risk losing him too.

It had taken a lot of convincing to get him to calm down, especially once the portal had closed again. He could hardly bear to think about Jemma spending a third week wherever she was, but deep down he knew May was right. He couldn't go in unprepared.

(And it _would_ be him, he thought firmly. That wasn't going to be up for discussion. If it came to that, he had a full argument ready to go. He, and possibly he alone, would go through the portal to find Jemma.)

So he had very reluctantly agreed to leave the cave and return to the Bus to get started on a plan. He was the only one capable of coming up with the tech he'd need to bring with him, even if he required help getting it done now.

Even though Skye was walking next to him, she was obviously giving him a wide berth. So were Bobbi and Hunter. He supposed he deserved it, in a way. Having a meltdown the magnitude of the one he'd just had tended to spook one's colleagues a bit.

"Okay," Hunter said out of the blue, breaking the silence as they walked. "I'm a little confused. What was with the whole Kirk and Spock, hands-on-the-glass thing back there?"

Fitz felt his spine stiffen. Glancing toward Skye, he saw her looking back over her shoulder to give Hunter a confused look. He heard Bobbi sigh.

"What?" Hunter sounded defensive. "I used to watch a lot of Star Trek as a kid."

"You _still_ watch a lot of Star Trek," Bobbi muttered.

Fitz took one breath in, let one breath out. He could feel Hunter's eyes on him and it was making him feel prickly.

"Really, though," Hunter continued. "I mean, I get everyone says you and Simmons used to be a thing, but I didn't believe it. You two act like you'd rather be thrown to a pack of rabid wolves than be in the same room, but suddenly here it's all 'I'm going to get you back' and then you're going absolutely bloody mental." He huffed. "I don't get it."

When it became clear that Fitz wasn't going to say anything, Skye looked at him for a long moment before glancing back at Hunter. "Fitz and Simmons used to be...really close. Best friends."

"Yeah, I get that _now_," Hunter said. "What happened?"

Fitz could still see Skye in his periphery, looking at him again. Even Mack's head was turned slightly in their direction. Of course, what had happened didn't need saying. They all knew what it was: the elephant in the room. The _accident_, as they called it. His brain damage. Hunter, Bobbi, and Mack might not have known him before, but they all saw how much he struggled now.

He kept his eyes focused straight ahead and his expression blank, adjusting his grip on the D.W.A.R.F. case's handle. They were almost back to the Bus; it was in sight. The sooner they got there, the better. His nerves were frayed enough as it was, and Hunter wasn't helping. He didn't have time for this. _Jemma_ didn't have time for this.

Suddenly Hunter made a noise. "Bloody-wait. Fitz. _Mate_. Simmons is your girl?"

Fitz's cheeks flushed red, but it wasn't from embarrassment. It was anger and frustration at having his personal life trotted out before so many people. He'd never figured Hunter for having that good a memory, and he never should have said anything to begin with, all those months ago.

"What?" Bobbi asked, exasperated. "What are you talking about, Hunter?"

"Look." Hunter was on the defensive again. "A while back we were having a beer and Fitz said something about how he'd told some girl how he felt and she didn't feel the same, so she left. Simmons went undercover at Hydra." A pause. "It's her, then, yeah?"

Fitz finally turned his head toward them then, his expression stony. Bobbi was looking at him sympathetically, while Hunter looked a bit shamefaced. Ahead of him, Mack was frowning slightly. Their expressions burned him. He didn't _want_ their pity, didn't want them walking on eggshells around him because poor little Leo Fitz had a broken heart. It was bad enough that they did it already because of the aphasia. This would just make it worse.

But Skye-Skye was looking at him in surprise and shock, and something that looked like dismay. Somehow, hers was the worst expression of all. Fitz glared at them for another moment before facing front again. They'd reached the lowered ramp of the Bus-_finally_-and he stormed up it, pushing past Mack and heading straight for the lab.

"Right." Hunter realized he'd gone too far. "I'm just going to go upstairs and see what Coulson's doing…" He went to the stairs and headed up, while Bobbi and Mack hung back a bit, sharing a loaded look. Skye followed Fitz into the lab, coming right up to him and leaning in close.

"You really think that's what happened?" she asked, lowering her voice so the others wouldn't hear. "You think that's why Simmons left?"

Fitz really wasn't in the mood to play armchair psychologist. Huffing irritably, he set the D.W.A.R.F. case down and put his hands on his hips. When he looked at her, his face was carefully composed. "We need to get to work." Without waiting for an answer, he bent back down to get the D.W.A.R.F. case opened.

"Right," Skye said quietly. "You're right." She sighed. "Okay, what first?"

Glad he had her focus shifted away from his personal woes, Fitz nodded at the device screen in her hands. "First, we need to get the top off the casing of this and see if we can a-a-if we can use it," he said. "See if we can understand how it works, and if I can use it once-once I go through."

Skye nodded, and he ignored the way she gave him a pointed look at his use of _I_. "Got it. I'll get Mack to help with that."

Fitz fought down the burst of frustration and self-hatred that bubbled up just then-he should have been able to work with the screen himself, not rely on others to do it for him-and maybe on a good day, now, he would have been able to. But today was not a good day. His hands were shaking too much. "And-anything else you think might-might be able to help. Anything I can use."

"Well, _we_ are taking ICERs with us at least, that's for sure." Skye started to walk away, but paused. "Oh! Also, we could use-god, I hope they're still around here somewhere-those glasses, you know, the ones you made for-" She stopped herself just short of saying _Ward_, but it still hung unsaid between them. "The ones we used on that mission in Belarus. Maybe we could modify them, use the screen tech somehow, so we could beam back video of whatever the wearer sees over there."

It was a brilliant idea. Fitz's mouth twitched despite himself, a ghost of a smile. "Good idea, Skye," he said. She brightened at his praise, and for a brief second he felt a little guilty. He wasn't the only one concerned about Jemma, and having Skye feel useful was taking away some of her own stress, helping her to better focus on what needed to be done.

"Great. I'll start looking for the glasses." Skye handed him the screen. "Mack can get started with this." Then she turned to start going through the first of the many cases of equipment that lined the walls. Taking a deep breath to center himself, Fitz carried the screen over to Mack before going to one of Jemma's cases to pull out a set of slides containing tissue samples of the entire team..

It took Skye longer than expected to find the glasses. Fitz didn't really want to think about just _how_ long, because he knew every minute that passed was even longer for Jemma, and that this time around it was going to be more than a week for her. As time wore on he knew more than an hour had passed since they left the cave, but he was very pointedly not looking at his watch to check.

He had to force himself to focus. Time spent worrying over Jemma was time _not_ spent working on the tools needed to get her back. If he could treat this like one of her experiments-focusing on one step at a time, not getting ahead of himself, following things through to a logical conclusion-he could finish everything faster, with the additional bonus of not falling completely apart at the seams in a panic.

By the time Skye shouted in triumph, leaning back to hold up the glasses, Fitz and Mack had only just settled on a tentative understanding of what made the device screen work. She came trotting over to them, smiling widely, and ducked under one of the D.W.A.R.F.s Fitz had aloft.

"Found them," she said, holding them up. "Any progress here?"

"Sort of," Mack replied, glancing at her. He gestured at the screen, which had the top of the casing off and set to the side, exposing wires and circuits. "We _think_ we can tell what sort of signal this thing is running on." He looked to Fitz for confirmation.

Fitz swallowed, glancing up from his tablet. "Um-yeah. We've managed to is-is-figure out the frequency of the video signal and I think if-if we can modify the signal in the glasses to match, we, um, we can get the glasses to work like we did in Belarus." He pointed to a diode set into the frame's circuitry. "We'll have to use this to do it. I think we'll be okay re-taking it out. It shouldn't affect the screen working at all."

Skye nodded, eyeing the glasses speculatively. "Will it fit in here?" She tapped a finger against the thin black frames.

"Doesn't need to," Fitz said, shaking his head. "We're not really going for covert here."

"Good point." Skye turned to look at Bobbi, who was working at her own hastily-made station on the other side of the room. "How are you doing?"

Having a background in biology, Bobbi had assigned herself the task of using the slide of Jemma's tissue samples to put together something that could be used in a tracker. She'd managed to find enough equipment on the Bus to do it and, although she said the conditions weren't exactly optimal, it was the best she could do given her resources. She'd reassured them the sample wouldn't be contaminated. At Skye's question she looked up, readjusting her safety glasses.

"Almost done," she said. "If Fitz was right-" She shot him a reassuring look. "All we'll need to do is load this into the tracker he's building, it'll scan her genetic blueprint, and then start scanning for a match."

Ah, yes. The tracker. Fitz looked at the small pile of parts that lay on top of a case next to Sneezy, the drone whose specs they were going to borrow for the tracker, and tried his best not to frown. He failed. They'd spent so much time on the device screen that he hadn't even had a chance to start on the tracker.

And the clock was still ticking. He knew May had reported in over the comm at least twice, if not more.

He heaved a sigh, taking a moment to close his eyes and rub his fingers across his brow. He could feel a headache coming on. "Okay. Right. Um-Mack, are you going to be okay handling the-the tracker?"

Mack nodded with a smile. "Yeah, no problem. I've got Sneezy here ready to go, it shouldn't be too hard to put something that works together." When Fitz paused, unsure, he shooed him away. "I got this, Turbo. Go work on the glasses."

Fitz nodded reluctantly before letting Skye pull his attention over to her. She carefully picked up the screen while he tapped at his tablet, making the drone he'd been using follow her over to a large case she'd commandeered as their own flat surface to work on. "Alright," Skye said, getting settled on the floor. "Walk me through this."

They all fell back to work again. Fitz guided Skye through the process of taking the signal diode out of the screen frame and attaching it to the wires in the glasses, and tried his best not to hover like a mother hen. It was hard-Skye had the manual dexterity to handle the fine wire work, but he was struggling again with the technical terminology, often having to resort to crude, blunt language to get his point across. Fortunately, Skye had acquired the patience of a saint, and never once snapped at him for getting frustrated.

Once Bobbi finished with her portion of the work, she disappeared upstairs into the main cabin of the Bus. After Mack finished putting the tracker together, Fitz left Skye to test it out. The cartridge containing Jemma's tracking sample slid neatly into the device Mack had cobbled together, an indicator light glowing green.

"We don't have enough time to put a visual scanner on this," Mack explained, pointing to the light. "But listen for the beeps. Obviously it's not working now because Simmons isn't here, but-it's like a proximity beacon. The closer you get, the faster it beeps."

Fitz nodded. It was an approximation of some of the scanning technology he'd originally programmed into Sneezy; he just hoped it would work. He didn't anticipate having to search a wide area for Jemma-at least, he hoped he wouldn't-but this would be a sort of backup if he needed it.

Once he finished the modification of the glasses with Skye, there was really nothing more they could do to prepare. While Mack went to go call everyone else downstairs, Fitz forced himself not to look at his watch again. He didn't want to see what time it was, because then he would do the math and figure out just how long Jemma had spent alone in that other dimension. He wasn't sure he could bear knowing.

_Focus._

After everyone-save May, who was listening in via comm-had assembled in the cargo bay and all of the technology had been explained, Coulson fixed him with a wry look that belied the seriousness of his tone.

"I want to send May in to do this," he said. "And Bobbi. But I get the feeling that's not going to go over well with you."

Aware of everyone's eyes on him, Fitz lifted his chin slightly, steeling his nerves. "I think it should be me who goes in." He paused. "Sir."

Behind him, Hunter mumbled something that he couldn't catch. Skye was shaking her head vehemently. "Fitz, that is a _terrible _idea." When he turned to her, his face clouding over as his hackles raised, she held up a hand. "We have no idea what's over there or what's happened to Simmons. It could be anything. Having you go alone is just-dumb."

She wasn't saying it, but Fitz knew she was thinking about Trip: how he had gone in alone after her at San Juan, and paid for it with his life.

But Coulson simply nodded at them as if he had expected their protests. "May has the skills to deal with any hostiles that may be on the other side. Bobbi could do that _and_ deal with any potential injuries Simmons might have."

"I know that, sir." Fitz swallowed down all thoughts of Jemma being hurt. "But we don't have enough time to, um, outfit everyone for this. And the more people you send across, the riskier it gets. The more-more people you could lose. And if something goes wrong over there with the tech, you know I'm the only person who can get it back on-online. Even with my bad hand." He raised the offending one briefly. Seeing Coulson wasn't convinced, he pressed on. "Besides...I'm the one who knows Jem-Simmons the best."

He couldn't help the way his voice faltered slightly at that. Their friendship might be in ruins now, but he still had ten years of history to go on.

"I know her habits, how she-how she works," he added. "If anyone can find her...it's me."

This time Coulson gave him a considering look. "It's a risk sending you in alone. A big one."

Of course it was. He knew that. And Fitz would be lying to himself if he said the only reason he wanted to do this was simply to save Jemma. It was a large part of it-a _very_ large part-but there was also a part of him that was determined to prove his worth. Back before Hydra, he'd almost been desperate for a way to show that he was every bit as brave and capable as, say, Ward. Since waking from his coma, that need had transformed into a desire to prove he was capable at all. He knew he'd made progress and taken some big steps lately, but he still couldn't shake that niggling feeling that everyone thought him useless.

Swallowing again, Fitz looked Coulson straight in the eye. "I know it is, sir. But trust me. I can do it."

There was another long moment where Coulson just looked at him, sizing him up and analyzing all the factors that were in play. Skye was still shaking her head no. Fitz fought the urge to fidget, tap his foot, pace, _anything-_-because they were wasting precious time. Finally Coulson lifted a finger to his ear: May was saying something over the comm. Then he looked across at Bobbi. She nodded slightly, just once.

Sighing, Coulson looked back to him. "Alright, Fitz. This is your op. _But-_-we'll be monitoring you the whole time. And Bobbi's going to be prepped to go in too if necessary. Don't think I won't send her in after you if things start to go south."

Fitz felt a sliver of tension ease out of him. "Hopefully it-it won't take that long."

Coulson raised an eyebrow. "You think you can find Simmons in ten minutes?"

"Hopefully." It was a big _if_. "But Mack's bringing the D.W.A.R.F.s back with us. I think if he can finish the scans that Simmons started before she fell through, he can use that to start w-working on getting the portal oper-running on manual."

"Good idea. Because you'll be there for a week if he can't." Coulson turned to everyone else, checking his watch. "Okay team, if you hurry you can make it back to the cave before the portal opens back up. Skye, I want both you and Fitz at least on comms the entire time. I'll stay here with the Bus to make sure no one comes and steals it. Good luck." He clapped Fitz on the shoulder, but his parting look was a very serious one. He didn't need to be told; a lot was riding on everything going smoothly.

Bobbi and Hunter kept up a steady stream of talk on the way back to the cave, giving Fitz bits of advice on how to handle different sorts of surprise situations, and occasionally bickering a little when they disagreed on the appropriate response. Fitz just breathed through his nose as he looked up at the moon peeking through the trees. That alone was enough to dampen his mood and allow the worry and dread to rise back to the surface-enough time had passed on the Bus that afternoon had slid into night.

The thought that Jemma had spent more than a month now in the other dimension was terrible-along with worrying over what could possibly have led her to abandon the room. May had reported in every hour they were gone, saying that Jemma had never come back to the portal. Whatever had happened, it wasn't a stretch to imagine that she was in trouble. They knew she wouldn't have stranded herself there on purpose.

As they exited the cave tunnel back into the room where May was waiting with the portal, Skye put a light hand on his arm. "Are you sure you don't want me at least to come with you?" she asked quietly. "Or Bobbi? You know you could use the backup."

"I'll be fine," he murmured. Setting the D.W.A.R.F. case down next to the machine, he straightened and dusted his hands off on his jeans. "Anyway, you've got to stay here and mo-keep the comms and everything going."

"I know." Skye handed him the special earpiece they'd rigged to (hopefully) transmit across the portal, keeping him linked to them via audio. "But I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask."

Fitz hummed lightly as he slipped the earpiece in. He wouldn't say it, but part of him appreciated the offer.

"You've got two minutes until the portal opens back up," May announced, checking her timer. "Time to get ready."

Everyone nodded and set to work. Fitz pulled on his tactical vest, making sure the straps were snug. Then Bobbi handed him an ICER, which he stuck into the waistline of his jeans, and several extra clips, which went in his backpack along with the field tools they'd packed earlier. Mack got the D.W.A.R.F. case open and a trifold tablet out, powering up the drones the way Fitz had showed him. Hunter passed over the tracker and the small screen, which Fitz was taking so he could keep an eye on the portal room at all times. Clipping the tracker to his vest and making sure both it and the screen were powered up, Fitz turned to look at the portal frame.

"Oh! Don't forget these." Behind him, Skye produced the glasses, which she slipped quickly onto his face when he turned back around. "There you go." She smiled and bent to pick up her laptop. "Fitz-vision."

"Here we go," May said.

Right on schedule, the machine revved up, pinged, and with a flash of light the portal opened back up. As of the surface of it rippled gently before evening out, Fitz focused on what he could see of the white room. There was still no sign of Jemma.

"Portal's open," he said, alerting Coulson over the comm. "I'm going in."

"Good luck, Fitz," came his reply. "Let's get Simmons back."

Turning slightly, he looked at May and raised his eyebrows. May raised hers in return.

"Go on," she said. "You don't have much time."

Fitz nodded, then turned to look back at everyone else. Mack was smiling at him encouragingly, nodding his head, as were Bobbi and Hunter. Skye was giving him a thumbs-up. He smiled slightly, drawing courage from their faith in him.

Then he turned back toward the portal. This was it-now or never. The clock was ticking down on his window of opportunity, and he didn't have another second to lose.

Taking a deep breath, Fitz closed his eyes and stepped through the portal.


	4. Chapter 4

Fitz's body felt like it was exploding in a burst of tingles and shocks, as if all his limbs had fallen asleep and he was painfully regaining feeling in them. It was almost enough to cause him to stumble-almost-but then he opened his eyes as he registered solid ground beneath his feet, and the world swam into focus.

He was in the white room. He'd successfully made it. Looking around, he saw that it was bare, just like the screen had shown: plain walls and floor, no visible decoration or furniture. He turned to look back at the portal. It was identical to the one he had just walked through but, as Jemma had said, it didn't have any buttons or switches on the console. Skye and May were both visible inside the frame, features lightly blurred by the faint rippling of the portal. Skye was looking at him anxiously.

"I'm through," he said, hoping his comm was still working. "Do you copy?"

Skye's face lit up just as a faint hiss of static came over his comm. "We copy, Fitz." That was Coulson. "Are you okay?" The audio was slightly distorted, but Fitz didn't have any trouble understanding him. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied. "Just...tingly." He shook his free hand a bit. "It's going away, though. Are my glasses on?"

Skye looked down at her laptop. "Fitz-vision is a go," she confirmed, looking pleased. It was strange, hearing her voice both over the comm and through the portal. "Wow, I can't believe everything's working."

Once upon a time, Fitz would have been insulted. Now? He was just as glad and thankful. "Yeah, me neither," he muttered.

"Nine minutes, Fitz," said May.

"Right." He blew out a breath before heading for the open door on the far side of the room. Just as he reached it, the tracker on his vest beeped. A few seconds later, it beeped again. And then again. Fitz glanced back at the portal; he was about to leave visual contact, and he was more nervous about that than he wanted to admit. Seeing Skye give him one last thumbs-up, he nodded and went through the door.

The next room was empty as well, the same size as the one he'd just left, and with an identical door set into the far wall. Fitz opened it cautiously to peer out into a long, wide hallway. This was the last place Jemma had mentioned seeing. He didn't see any other doors save for the one at the end of the hall, so he headed quickly for it. The beeps from the tracker sped up a little, and so did Fitz's heart.

"Come on, Jemma," he murmured. "Where are you hiding?"

The door at the end of the hallway was significantly heavier and thicker than the previous two doors he'd gone through; he grunted a little, leaning his weight into it as he pushed it open. Beyond it he found a large circular room that had several doors set into the wall at regular intervals, with what looked like a kiosk of sorts in the middle. Fitz took a few hesitant steps forward, wincing when the door clanged shut behind him. The sound echoed through the room.

"It's really-_quiet_, here," he said.

"Yeah, and empty," Skye added over the comm. "It's kinda creepy."

Fitz frowned; even though the room was indeed empty, he couldn't shake the sudden, vague feeling that he was being watched. He took a few more steps toward the center of the room, glancing down at the tracker. The beeping was holding steady. "Jemma?" he called out.

Still, silence. No noise at all aside from the beeping of the tracker. No signs of life. He couldn't even hear so much as a ventilation system humming.

But the feeling that he was being watched remained.

"Seven minutes." May was still keeping time.

"Okay. I'm-I'm, uh, going to check out some of these doors," Fitz said, turning to his right. He didn't want to say it out loud, but the silence and the emptiness was fast starting to sap his hope. The thought occurred to him that he would miss the portal if he had to-hopefully the functionality of his equipment wasn't tied to it being active-and he'd gladly spend a week there if it meant finding Jemma.

The first door he came to didn't have a handle on his side; in fact, the only way he knew it was a door at all was because the hinges were visible. He rapped on it with his fist before leaning in to press his ear against it. He couldn't hear anything. Then he looked down the row of doors and saw that _none_ of them had handles, save the one directly across from the door he'd come through. He started to walk toward it.

"Jemma?" he shouted again, louder. Then: "These doors don't have any handles, which is strange." He thought narrating his actions might help Skye and the rest of the team understand what he was doing. "Except for this one over here. I'm going to go have a look-"

He was interrupted by a loud popping sound, repeating several times in quick succession. He looked up to see four robots suddenly blocking his path, bluish-white light fading around them as if they'd just teleported in-and he believed they had, since they hadn't come through the door he was headed for.

"Careful, Fitz." Skye sounded guarded.

Fitz automatically raised his arms in a gesture of surrender. The robots didn't appear very threatening-vaguely humanoid in shape, red and white casing, with fleshy-looking hands-but he didn't want to spook them. One of them took two steps toward him before a thin beam of red light shot out from a small eye located in the center of its head, running over him from head to toe. Fitz instinctively flinched.

"Candidate has been located," the robot said. It had a neutral, almost pleasant voice. "Candidate will now be scanned."

"Uh…" Fitz remained still while the red light ran over him again. He could hear the faint strains of background chatter coming over the comm.

"Scanned for what?" Skye asked.

The robot beeped. "Candidate has been scanned. Candidate is unfit for processing." It paused. "Candidate will now be terminated."

Fitz's jaw dropped. "Uh-_no_. No, that's not-you don't…" He started to back up, hands still raised, as all four of the robots moved to stand in a line, the panels of their faces peeling back to reveal guns locking into place.

"Fitz, get out of there!" Skye cried.

He turned and ducked just as the first blast went over his head, hitting the wall behind him. Then he sprinted for the door he'd come through as another green beam of energy flew past him. Coulson was yelling over the comm, demanding to know what was happening, and Skye was explaining as fast as she could. Fitz skidded to a halt in front the door, looking at it wildly; then a jolt of horror ran through him.

It didn't have a handle on the outside either.

"Oh, bloody hell," he breathed, running his hands frantically over the seams of the door, looking for anything that might open it. "I'm stuck. The door doesn't have a handle!" Another blast hit the wall just to his right and he ducked again on instinct.

"What was that, Fitz?" Coulson demanded.

"I _said_," Fitz shouted, "that this door on-only opens from the inside, and I can't get through!" He looked back at the robots. They could shoot, which was definitely bad, but they were also a bit slow. Three of them were now having to turn to face him once again, while the one in front was plodding in his direction, the gun in its head glowing as its energy cell charged back up.

"Shoot them!" Skye cried.

Fitz quickly pulled his ICER from the waistline of his jeans and aimed; despite his shaky grip, he managed to hit the lead robot's hand on the second shot. He'd hoped, with the hands looking somewhat organic, that the dendrotoxin in the bullets might have some effect on the robot, but it didn't. It merely absorbed the shot and kept moving forward.

Fitz cursed and shook his head even though she couldn't see him. "They're ruddy _robots_, Skye, the ICER didn't-it won't do a damn thing." He ducked another blast from the robots, sticking his pistol back in his jeans, then looked around the room again. If he could make it to the kiosk without getting shot, the robots would have to turn again to get him in their line of sight, and that would buy him time to get to the door on the opposite side of the room, the one that had a handle. He turned to give his door one last look to make sure there wasn't a way through.

Coulson's voice came over the comm again. "I'm sending Bobbi through, so she-"

Skye crying out cut over him. "Fitz, the tracker!"

With everything happening all at once, Fitz had stopped paying attention to it. But now he could hear that the beeping had sped up rapidly; it was fast enough to almost be a steady drone. Before what that meant could sink in, there was a loud crash behind him.

He spun around to see the lead robot falling to the floor, sparks spitting from its head casing. A masked figure had entered the room from the door he'd been trying to get to-it was now wide open-and was attacking the robots with brutal efficiency, a weapon in each hand. Fitz could only stare in awe and surprise as the person slammed the next robot with a wooden pole, knocking it off-balance; then ran it through the head with some kind of sword, its blade crackling with bright white energy. The third robot went down in a similar fashion. His savior then ducked an energy blast from the last robot before dropping the sword and using both hands to sweep the pole in a wide arc, knocking its legs out from underneath it. Then they stood and drove the pole harshly down into the center of the robot's head, crushing its gun in a burst of sparks.

Then there was silence, save for the twitching remains of the robots and the continued beeping of his tracker. Fitz looked between it and the masked figure-it wasn't a mask so much as it was a visor, he noted dimly, pulled down to protect her face-who was bending to retrieve and clip the sword to her belt, thumbing a button at the hilt to turn the blade energy off. It was definitely a woman. Her build was slight and she was shorter than him, in dark jeans and boots, wearing what looked like armor cobbled together from bits of robot casing. Shoulder-length brown hair peeked out from behind the visor. With all the evidence before him, Fitz knew there was only one person it could be-but his mind rejected it. She was _nothing_ like this.

He swallowed thickly and switched off his tracker as the woman turned to walk toward him, stopping a few steps away.

"I waited," she said flatly without preamble, voice muffled behind the visor.

There was no mistaking that accent, or that particular lilt. Fitz's heart shuddered to a halt in his chest. "Jemma?" he choked out. "Is that you?"

"I waited for you," she repeated. "I waited for you to come and get me, but you never did." She pulled the visor up, revealing her face, and Fitz felt all the blood drain from his.

It was Jemma. Without a doubt, it was her-the same face he'd known and loved for a decade. But everything was wrong; she was different. There were lines and wrinkles creasing around her eyes and mouth and forehead now, and the shape of her face was softened by age. Too _much_ age. Fitz had never been the best judge of it, but the woman before him was easily Coulson's age or older. The way she carried herself was far too stiff and defensive. And she was glaring at him, her eyes hard and angry.

He could only stare back at her in stunned confusion.

"What...are we seeing here?" Skye asked slowly over the comm, sounding just as shocked as he felt.

"Jemma?" Fitz breathed, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. "What…?"

"I waited. I stayed near that portal for three weeks, and it never opened back up." Her voice was rough with disuse, but flat and controlled. "So I decided to try and save myself. But, as I'm sure you've now noticed, there isn't a way back in. Now you're stuck here too."

Fitz gaped at her. Jemma always had a tendency to make her voice go cool and clinical when she was trying to mask her emotions, but this was different. She wasn't hiding anything now; he could tell. She sounded hollow. Empty. Everything about her looked and sounded off.

"Three minutes, Fitz." May's voice had an edge to it.

"No-No, I'm not stuck here," Fitz stammered, gesturing to the door he was standing next to. "_We're_ not. The portal's still open, we've got time. Bobbi can open the door and get us out of-"

Jemma's eyes flashed dangerously. "If you think I'm going back to _them_, you're wrong."

"What?" Fitz's face flushed. "But this is-I'm-this is _it_, I've found you, we can go back now!"

"_You_ can go back." Jemma squared her shoulders. "But I'm not. Not to S.H.I.E.L.D."

May's voice came over the comm again. "You're almost out of time, Fitz. Thirty seconds before I can't send Bobbi through with enough time to make it back."

"Are you _mad?_" Fitz cried, taking a step forward. "Jemma-you'll-I'm not going to leave without you."

"Fitz, please." Skye this time on the comm, sounding rushed and upset. "I don't know what's happening here, but bring her back. Come back, both of you. Please."

Jemma had turned away from him to walk toward the door she'd come through. "Then you should get comfortable," she said over her shoulder. "You're going to be here for awhile."

"Fitz," May said, "There's just enough time for you at least to come back. I'm sending Bobbi-"

"_No_," Fitz snapped. "I told you I'm not leaving wi-without her."

Jemma stopped at that, turning suddenly to stride swiftly back to him until she was right in his face, leaning up to glare into his glasses. Fitz took a step away, one hand held up as if to ward her off. "Can they hear me?" she demanded, an undercurrent of disgust in her voice. "Can they see me too, is that what those ridiculous glasses are for?" Without waiting for an answer, she leaned closer. "I hope you sleep easy tonight, knowing you've lost _two_ agents to this place."

Fitz blinked rapidly, struggling to get his thoughts in order as Jemma walked away again. This was _not_ going according to plan. At all. Nothing could have prepared him for what he was currently facing.

"That's it." Skye's voice was shaky. "The portal's about to close. You'll be there for at least a week. Or-or longer."

"Better hope Mack gets it running on manual soon then," Fitz replied quietly. He didn't want to think too much about the possibility of him being stranded there for years, like Jemma had been. He still needed to figure out what precisely had happened, and find a way to get through to her. With that in mind, he jogged after her to catch up.

"Jemma," he said, "Wait. I don't-" She brushed past him to go through the door. He paused to give her room, then followed her through the small antechamber beyond and out into sunlight.

Once his eyes adjusted to the glare, Fitz could see that they were on wide open grassy ground, crossing from the large, white-walled building they'd left behind to a stand of trees in the distance. They looked to be in a valley-there were snow-capped mountains on both sides of them, and the sky had a vague purple tint to it. A light breeze ruffled his hair. It felt a lot like early spring. It would have been beautiful, he thought, if he weren't so preoccupied with matters of life and death.

"Portal's closed," Skye murmured, clearly upset. "I'm sorry." Fitz sighed. At least he knew now that his equipment worked when the portal was closed. _Small victories_, he told himself.

"I'll be fine, Skye," he said quietly. "Trust me." Then he skipped to catch up with Jemma once more.

"Jemma," he tried again. She was walking somewhere with purpose and he had no choice but to follow. "I don't understand what's happened. We-we never left the portal, it opened back up after another hour just, um, just like we thought, but you-you weren't there. And May stayed to watch it, when we left to-but anyway, it should have just been a few weeks, two months tops. Not _years_-"

"Twenty-six years, seven months, two weeks, and three days," Jemma cut in, her eyes fixed firmly straight ahead.

Fitz blinked, aghast and momentarily thrown by her brusque manner. She'd never been this curt with him, even lately when things between them were at their worst. "Right," he said quietly. Then, louder: "Twenty-six years. It shouldn't have been that long."

"Maybe it shouldn't have been, but it was." They'd reached a tiny, one-story building-more like a shed than an actual building-and Jemma turned abruptly to face him by the door. "I've been here, alone, for a very long time. More than enough time to reconcile myself to certain truths. Namely, that I'll likely die here. And that I'll never go home again."

"But-" Fitz gestured back at the building they'd come from. "Jemma, I don't understand. You could have gone home, _we_ could have, back there. But-but you didn't. Why?"

Jemma looked away, her jaw clenching. "There's nothing for me to return to."

Fitz's temper flared suddenly. "That's-that's not true. That's rubbish. You know that." He laughed shortly, but it was harsh and rough. "You've got the team and...and the lab, and-you've got-"

_You've got me_. It had been instinct to say it, but he'd caught himself just in time. He couldn't say it. Not even when desperation clawed at his throat, not even when the love he felt for her burned like acid in his chest. She didn't even want him to begin with. Not anymore.

If Jemma could tell what he'd meant to say, she didn't show it. "Fitz," she said, still not looking at him, "I'm fifty-three years old now. If I go back, what will S.H.I.E.L.D. do with me? I'm different now; I've changed. I don't think I could go back to my regular duties, because I'm not cut out for that sort of life anymore. And I _won't_ let them run experiments and tests on me as if I'm some sort of lab animal."

Fitz kept himself from reminding her that, before she'd gone through the portal, she would have been very excited to do just that sort of thing to another person.

"After Hydra, for a long time I wasn't sure exactly why I stayed with S.H.I.E.L.D.," she added. "Twenty-six years on my own has given me enough time to decide that I'm quite through with them. You-_they-_-gave up on me. So I gave up on them."

Fitz didn't miss her slip-up, and he felt his stomach drop even as his free hand clenched. "Jemma, I didn't-"

But she was turning away from him again, opening the door to the small building and walking in. "You need to come inside before the robots realize they didn't kill you, and come back. They can't find you here; you'll be safe."

He hesitated a moment before following her in, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Jemma had gone to a stack of crates in the far corner, taking her visor off and setting it down on them. While her back was turned, Fitz got a good look around the room. There was a threadbare cot pushed against the wall with just a simple blanket and pillow on the mattress, and a few lamps and random odds and ends scattered throughout the room: the meager trappings of a lifetime spent alone. Sadness settled in his stomach like a block of wet concrete, and he swallowed against the emotions threatening to rise.

"This is all wrong…" Skye's voice was barely audible over the comm, slow and strained, echoing his feelings.

The entire left side of the room was taken up by what looked to be a large generator, which was humming gently, a light blue glow coming from somewhere deep inside it. Fitz took off his backpack and set the device screen carefully down before drifting toward it.

"Is-is this what keeps the robots away?" he asked, gesturing at the generator. Maybe if he better understood where they were trapped, he could find the words for what his brain was currently refusing to help him with.

Jemma looked briefly toward him. "Yes." She leaned her wooden pole against the crates. "Something about the generator, the energy it gives off, turns this building into a blind spot for them. It's the only place in the entire compound like it. But I don't-" She paused, looking back to him and drawing in a slow breath. "I don't have the technical expertise to figure out why. That was always your area."

Fitz nodded, looking back at the generator as an uncomfortable silence settled over them. If he'd thought trying to talk to _his_ Jemma had been painful and awkward and stilted, then this was far worse. This older version of her had a hardness that felt wrong and out of place, like she'd erected walls and barriers to keep anything from getting in. To protect herself, he realized, from being hurt. Again. Because she felt like she'd been abandoned.

He knew a moment of intense sorrow that was at odds with the same walls he'd built around himself. Yes, he'd made the decision to push Jemma away to protect himself, but he'd never wanted this for her. He didn't want her to turn into the angry, bitter man he'd found himself turning into. But they'd always been so equally matched. He could appreciate the irony of the situation, even as it made bile rise in his throat.

(And then, he thought to himself, was it really fair of him to divide Jemma, to think of her as _then_ and _now_, as _his_ and _this_? Had Jemma divided him this way, into _before_ and _after_? He was still the same person, the same physical body. Jemma was too. He couldn't forget that.)

"So…what is this place?" he asked when the silence became unbearable. Before, Jemma might have filled it with nervous, rambling chatter, but she didn't look so inclined anymore. "Did you ever figure it out?"

Jemma crossed her arms over her chest armor. "It's a processing facility of some sort, as best I can tell. Based on the verbal commands of the robots, I can only guess that people-or aliens, whoever-were moved through here, sort of like a checkpoint. I'm certain those other doors in the round room lead to other portals. So, an intergalactic immigration center, if you will." She looked toward him, and nodded at the window set into the door. "I'm sure you've noticed, but we're not on Earth."

"I-yeah." Fitz turned to glance out the window and up at the purple sky, before looking back at Jemma. "The robots, they-they um, scanned me and said I wasn't fit. Fit for processing. What did they mean?"

Jemma shrugged stiffly. "I haven't been able to find out. I don't know if it's a particular aspect of our physiological makeup, or if it's just simply being the wrong species altogether. There aren't any computers or data terminals here aside from an artificial intelligence interface that I've been able to communicate with verbally, but all it will do is tell me how long I've been here. I haven't been able to locate its source. Also, the facility seems to be abandoned. I've never seen another living being here, though the robots do keep coming. I wish I knew where from, considering the number I've killed since I've been here." She sighed. "They're slow, but deadly. Once they realize you're here, they won't stop coming. It makes getting around the compound very tricky."

Fitz soaked it all in, turning her words over in his mind. "So…you've been hiding from them for twenty-six years."

"And trying to find a way out of here," Jemma said.

His shoulders slumped. "This is wrong," he murmured, repeating Skye's words.

"Well, there's nothing to be done about it now," Jemma snapped suddenly, startling him. "You never came to get me, I grew old alone here, and that's that." She stood and made to move past him toward another stack of crates, but without thinking Fitz reached out and caught her arm, forcing her to stop and look at him.

"Jemma, I-I don't care that you got old." Well, maybe he did a bit, but that was trivial compared to having her back and alive. "I just-I-I care that I wasn't…" His conviction failed him, and his grip on her arm loosened. "I care that..."

Jemma stared at him, a flash of what looked like pain flickering across her eyes. Then they hardened again. "Don't." She pulled her arm away from him. "Don't you dare. You hated me when I left. You could hardly stand to be near me. So don't-don't say things like that."

Fitz wanted to argue, to say that she was wrong, that he still cared about her and _didn't_ hate her…that he'd never hated her. But he knew deep down that he hadn't done much to make her think otherwise. He'd been pulling away out of a sense of self-preservation, trying to keep himself together, but…he thought she'd felt exactly the same way. That they were broken and irreparable and that it would be best to sever ties. In the hours since she'd gone through the portal, he'd been committed to getting her back safe and sound no matter the cost. Then he could leave her be again, the way he thought she wanted.

That glimpse of pain in her eyes made him question for the first time if he'd been wrong all along about her.

"I almost went through the portal," he said, out of a lack of anything else to say-anything that could convince Jemma he didn't hate her. "When it opened for the first time and you weren't-weren't there. I tried to go through-I _wanted_ to. To, um, to find you. But they wouldn't let me go alone without any equipment." He gestured vaguely at his tactical vest and then at his backpack, sitting behind him on the floor. "May said she didn't want to lose another agent."

"And yet, here you are." Jemma turned to give him a thin smile that was devoid of any real humor. "Funny how things work out."

Fitz sighed and looked away. It had taken a lot to admit all of that to her just now, to lay bare his intentions and open himself up to possible ridicule and rejection. Even now, after everything, he was still looking for a sign, for anything, anything at all to show that perhaps Jemma still cared. A smile, a nod. _Anything_.

But her face was so carefully guarded now; there was no way to tell what she was thinking.

He sighed. "There's a way to fix this. I _know_ there is. I just can't…I can't…" He squeezed his eyes shut and started to pace in agitation, one hand on his hip and the other flapping about. "I can't-I don't-have the _words_..."

He could see it in his mind's eye, picture the diagrams and equations and theories almost perfectly, something he'd learned about quantum theory that could possibly explain everything, but he couldn't quite grasp it fully. Something about the passage of time relative to-to-

The words slipped away from him, and he groaned to himself in frustration. There was a solution to this, a way to make things right, he _knew_ there was. He just had to sort his thoughts out…

Jemma watched him for a moment, face impassive. "Quantum physics?" she said. "I remember what you said, at the portal."

"Yes!" He snapped his fingers and kept pacing, except now he was pinching the bridge of his nose. "Something about...string theory…multi-multiverses…"

An odd noise, almost like a groan, came over the comm. "Woah, Fitz, easy on the pacing there, buddy," Skye said, sounding a bit ill. "We're getting a little motion sick over here."

"Sorry." Fitz stopped pacing but kept his eyes shut, letting out a loud breath. "I think…time compression…wait. When I was at MIT, one of the professors there, he-he did a paper on string theory, and multiverses, or, um, parallel ones. And he ca-he put them in different levels."

"One through four." When he looked up, Jemma was staring at a point just over his left shoulder, deep in thought. "I remember that too."

"Yes-yes, you're right. There were four." Fitz pressed his fingers to his temples, struggling desperately to grab at the strands of memories and words he could just barely touch. "And I, um, I can't remember which one, which level, but-it said all the different regions of space were, were in-in-expanding faster-"

"Eternal inflation!" Jemma exclaimed, and she sounded so much like younger Jemma then, _his_ Jemma, that he looked up, startled. She'd taken a step closer to him, one hand raised in the way she often did when they were solving a puzzle, the way they had-_before_. Before his brain damage. His heart lurched, but he couldn't focus on that, he had to concentrate on what he was remembering, and what she was saying.

"And ekpyrotic theory," she added. "You explained this to me, years and years ago. When you took that elective on quantum theory at the Academy. In eternal inflation, quantum fluctuations in the universe's vacuum energy created-"

"Bubble universes." Fitz pulled his fingers away from his temples and pointed them at her. "It created bubble universes. And they-they, um, they went through their in-inflation-"

"Inflation stages-"

"At different rates! Which means time in the bubble universes could move at different rates, and it-it explains why it took longer for the portal to open here-"

"Because time in this dimension is speeding up at a rate exponential to our own." Jemma's lips curved in a faint smile. "Oh, Fitz, you did it. You figured it out."

And he was so caught up in the moment, so exhilarated and excited and _happy_ that he'd managed to explain something correctly, that he and Jemma had done it _together_, their words and sentences overlapping with ease the way they used to, that he didn't realize how close Jemma was. They'd unconsciously drifted toward each other as their minds raced to a logical conclusion, and now she was a mere hand's breadth away. Their eyes met and locked. He was smiling so widely it hurt, and having Jemma smile back at him, no matter how faintly, lightened his mood considerably. Fitz couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this happy, this in tune with her.

"You guys...you did your thing." Skye's voice was small and hopeful in his ear. "Welcome back, Fitzsimmons."

They held each other's gaze for another breath before Jemma blinked, and then the moment was gone. She ducked her head and stepped away from him, clearing her throat uncomfortably, and Fitz could feel her folding back in on herself emotionally. His happiness evaporated like mist under the morning sun.

"I'd had my suspicions that time moved like that here. It explains why you're-young, still. So you've identified what sort of dimension we're in, yes, but not how to escape," Jemma said gruffly, turning back to the crates by the door. "It hardly helps things."

And just like that, Fitz's heart splintered. Despair was rising up to engulf him and it felt like all the oxygen was being sucked from the room. She was right: he didn't know how to escape, now that the portal was closed. He was useless, and Jemma knew it. He couldn't figure out the cloaking, he couldn't figure out how to fix a hard drive, and he couldn't think of a way out of the mess they were in. Before, he could have done this. Now, he was completely reliant on other people and he _hated_ it. If he couldn't do it on his own, what good was he?

Suddenly he was aware that his breathing had gone shallow and pinpricks were dotting his vision. The walls of the room were closing in on him; he had to get out. "Skye-Skye wants to talk to you," he muttered, ripping his glasses off his face. "I need-here." He fumbled to shove them onto the crates with shaking hands before opening the door and going outside.

Being out in the open and away from Jemma staved off outright hyperventilating. His vision cleared, but the consuming heartache remained. Fitz wandered around the side of the building closest to the generator, trying to stay within its area of effect, and stared at the mountains in the distance. He was faintly aware of both Skye's and Jemma's voices sounding in his ear-evidently the glasses still had their audio capabilities from Belarus too-but he tried not to focus on what they were saying, instead letting his mind wander.

While his confidence had definitely just taken a massive hit, he couldn't shake the feeling that he hadn't remembered everything, that there was still something about the multiverse theory left that could give them a way out. No, that wasn't quite right. It wouldn't get them back home, but it _could_ save Jemma from decades spent alone. His problem was, as always, finding the words-making the neural connections in his brain required to piece all the information he had together and express it correctly. It had to do with the ekpyrotic theory Jemma had mentioned. He was sure of that. He was just missing one piece of the puzzle…

Without warning, his body jerked as if he had just walked straight into a wall.

"What the hell-?" he said, stumbling back a step and raising a hand to his forehead. There was nothing visible in front of him-just grass and the occasional tree, stretching all the way to where the valley floor raised into the mountains in the distance-but he had _definitely_ just walked into something. The light throbbing in his head proved it. Cautiously, he put his hand out and stepped slowly forward.

His hand met a solid, flat surface.

Frowning, Fitz reached out with his other hand. When it too pressed against something hard and flat, he looked around in confusion, hands seemingly patting the empty air in front of him. "An invisible wall?" he mumbled to himself. "Who would do-"

There was a loud popping noise right behind him.

Fitz turned around and came face-to-face with one of the robots, its fleshy hand held up to him. The fingertips grazed his cheek and suddenly the world tilted sideways as his entire body went numb and collapsed. Faintly, he heard the sound of a door slamming open and Skye's voice along with Coulson's yelling in his ear, and he tried to move, but his limbs felt too heavy. He could only look up at the robot above him as its face plates slid back to reveal the gun hidden within.

Just as he accepted that he was about to die, and rather stupidly at that, the robot's head exploded in a shower of sparks before falling off. Then Jemma came into view, pushing the robot's body over before leaning over him, still wearing his glasses. She looked furious.

"Stupid!" she snapped, her face distraught, and Fitz couldn't tell if that was aimed at him or her. When he struggled to sit up, she clipped her sword back to her belt and grabbed his arm to help pull him to standing. He wobbled a little on his feet, shaking his head as his mind cleared.

"How badly did it get you?" Jemma asked. She was already pulling him back to the building.

"Fitz, are you okay?" Skye sounded more concerned than Jemma did.

"Um-it-uh, it just got my cheek. Barely. What-"

"They have some kind of anaesthetic transfer in their hands," she said briskly, pushing him back inside ahead of her, then closing the door again once she was through. She took off his glasses and handed them back to him. "That's how they try to contain you first: tranquilize, then eliminate." She pushed past him to go to the cot, grabbing the blanket and fluffing it a bit over the mattress. "You didn't get the full effect-that would require full contact of the hand on your skin-but you still need to sit down until we're sure it's out of your system."

When Jemma gestured for him to sit, Fitz didn't move. He was staring at the blanket, transfixed by the way it had billowed and curled before settling back down on the mattress. Something about it was tickling the back of his mind.

"Sit down, Fitz." When he still didn't move, Jemma frowned slightly at him. "Fitz?"

"I can save you," he said suddenly, putting his glasses back on. "I-I've got it."

Jemma's frown deepened. "What?"

"Ekpyrotic theory." He was still staring at the blanket as if it held the answer to everything. "In the multiverse theory. It said that-that if the universe is the region where two pl-planes-branes?-collide, then it would be possible for them to collide in more than one place. Like-like flapping a sheet over a bed." He pointed at her cot. "And-and um, going off that...maybe it would be possible for-for earlier points in your timeline to be really close to your timeline now." He waved his hands about, trying to visualize it because the words weren't coming fast enough. "Like if your timeline was a straight line, but something ca-made it wave. Some parts would be closer than others. Close enough to connect. I have _no_ clue if it would even be possible, and if it is it'll be _mental_, but...yeah." He looked up at her then, a smile flitting across his face. "We could get younger you back. And-and you'd never have to spend your life alone here."

Jemma had been still the entire time he was speaking, face unreadable, but when he finished something cold and hard settled over her face. "No," she said.

"What?" It was Fitz's turn to be confused; his face fell. "But you-"

"I said _no_," Jemma repeated forcefully, and turned her back on him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

Fitz was at a loss for words. He couldn't understand why Jemma was so opposed to his idea to save her. "No? What-why-I mean, you wouldn't-"

"It's _my_ life you're talking about," she cried, whipping back around to face him. The ferocity in her eyes made him unconsciously take a step back. "_My_ life you want to erase. I've been stranded here alone for decades, yes, but it's still _my_ life, my experiences. I won't let you take that away."

Fitz fumbled for a reply. "Even if-um, I mean, you wouldn't remember this, if it works. It never would have happened."

"Because _I_ will have ceased to exist," Jemma shot back. "If you plan to do what I think you are-connect to an earlier part of my timeline-everything that I've done, everything I've learned since I've been here, will just…go away. Another Jemma will take my place. One who isn't me."

"I still don't see how that's, um, that's really a bad thing," he said stubbornly, shaking his head. "It _will_ still be you. But you won't have been here. Alone. Time could-"

Jemma's face darkened. "Don't even say it-"

"Time could be rewritten," he said loudly, cutting off her protest.

She gave him a withering look. "Fitz, this is _not_ an episode of Doctor Who," she said, moving past him to go back to where her wooden staff was propped up against the few crates in the corner next to her cot. "This isn't a game. It's real life. _My_ life."

"Yeah, I know that," Fitz said hotly. He could feel desperation, panic, and frustration start to well up in him again. "But why won't you let me at least try?" he demanded. "There's a chance this could work. Why-why won't you let me help you?"

There was a moment where Jemma didn't reply; instead she stood still, facing the wall, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. Then she picked up her staff and sighed before turning back to him. "Because it's already happened," she said quietly, her eyes avoiding his.

Fitz's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "What?"

"It was a long time ago," Jemma said, keeping her eyes fixed on the floor. "Not long after I came here and found this building. There was this…window. I don't know how else to explain it. But I was able to talk to myself from the future. And she said what you're telling me now: that there was a way to make sure I could go…home…and that I didn't have to stay here." She was silent for a moment, but when Fitz didn't say anything she glanced up at him. "But she-I-refused to help."

There was a lump in Fitz's throat. He had difficulty swallowing. "Why?"

"She told me that help was never going to come. Not really. She said I had to rely on myself." Jemma took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, her face going carefully blank again. Her emotional walls were going back in place. "I stopped waiting after that. Instead, I concentrated on survival and finding a way out on my own."

"But-hey." Fitz stopped himself just short of reaching out for her. "If you were able to talk to yourself, then that, um-that means that I figured it out. Right? I must have found a way to connect to that part of your timeline."

Jemma shrugged. "Possibly. I couldn't see or hear anyone else through that window."

Fitz sighed and rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, silently weighing his options. It took a moment to quash the panic inside, but he managed it. Then he nodded to himself and crossed over to where he'd put down his backpack and the small screen. He wobbled a little as he bent to pick both of them up; he still hadn't quite shaken off the effect of the robot's hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jemma move as if to steady him, but her hands never touched him. Grabbing one of the many work lamps scattered around the room, he took everything he had and got settled down on the floor next to the generator. "Well," he said, jaw set, "maybe you've given up. But I'm-I haven't."

He heard Jemma walk to the door after a pause. "I'm going out," she said briskly, as if he hadn't said anything. "The robots have set patrol routes and if I take them out every so often, it thins their numbers for awhile." She watched as he switched on the lamp and started digging through his backpack for some tools. Despite himself, he didn't feel too worried for Jemma. She hadn't survived as long as she had by being stupid; he trusted she could take care of herself. On top of that, he was finding it harder and harder to look at her and talk to her while maintaining his composure. Turning his back now would save them both a great deal of awkwardness.

"Anyway-you can stay or leave," she added. "Just...know that if you leave alone, you might be killed."

"I already said I'm n-not leaving without you," Fitz murmured, eyes focused on his tools and the small screen in front of him.

A long moment passed where he could feel Jemma's eyes on him. He had no way of knowing what she was thinking and for the moment he didn't even want to try. That way lay emotional turmoil and pain and the crumbling remnants of his composure. He couldn't focus on that, not if he wanted to work with any semblance of competence. Having another objective to focus on could distract him from the whirling mess that was his heart.

"Do whatever you like," Jemma finally said, and rushed out the door before slamming it shut behind her.

Fitz flinched slightly before taking a slow breath and looking back to the screen resting on the crate in front of him. First things first, he had to take the top of the casing back off.

After a moment, Skye's voice tentatively came over his comm. "Do you really think you can get our Simmons back?" she asked.

"Probably," Fitz mumbled as he worked. "Maybe. It's all hy-hypothetical. I need to see if I can get the tracker hooked up to this screen, and use it as some sort of-um, some sort of-homing beacon. Probably best to do it here, too. She's spent a lot of time here, so-might be easier to...might be easier to find her at an earlier point in her timeline. Yeah."

"And when you find her?" _When_, not _if_. Skye had a lot of faith in him. "What then?"

Fitz frowned as he gently pulled the top of the casing away from the screen and set it aside; his hands only shook a little. "Then...we do a lot of hoping. It's all crazy guesswork from there. I'll need a big power source-hope this generator can handle it." He leaned forward over the screen, tightly clenching his screwdriver in his hand as he used it to carefully poke at the wiring inside the screen. "It's a shot in the dark. But...I-I have to try."

"I know you do," Skye said quietly. "I would too, if I were you."

They fell silent for several minutes as Fitz concentrated. He had a laser cutter and a soldering iron out, attempting to make a port for the tracker to plug into the screen, but it was extremely slow going. The work was rather delicate and, even though his hands weren't shaking nearly as badly as they had before he went through the portal, it was still enough to frustrate and set him back.

"So," Fitz said after a while. He had the hole in the casing finished; that was something, at least. "How-how's Mack getting on with the portal?"

There were sounds of background chatter for a moment before Skye's voice was back in his ear. "Pretty good, actually," she said, and he didn't know if she was actually as cheerful about it as she sounded, or if she was putting it on for his benefit. Maybe it was a bit of both. "Mack's finished the scans that Simmons started with the D.W.A.R.F.s and he says he's almost got it figured out-how to get the power up, anyway, like it does whenever the portal opens. I think he's close."

"That-that's good." Fitz felt a small rush of pride for his friend. "Tell him I said 'good job'."

"Thanks, man!" He could hear Mack's voice in the background over the comm.

Skye laughed a little. "He can hear you, Fitz. I've still got Fitz-vision running on my laptop."

Fitz smiled, very faintly. "Oh. Yeah-right. Forgot about that." He unconsciously pushed his glasses up his nose a bit.

He'd briefly forgotten that the entire team, not just Skye, were privy to everything he and Jemma said and did, and his skin prickled at the idea that they were all getting front row seats to an uncomfortable part of his personal life. It made him want to clam up, to put his feelings aside and treat this as if it were a regular op-to treat Jemma as an objective rather than a person, much the same way he'd been trying to treat her for the past few months in order to save his sanity. It hurt on a level to think of her that way because deep down he still loved her and always would, but it was the only way he'd managed to survive day-to-day. And maybe...maybe that was what he needed to do here. Instead of bleeding his heart dry, he could appeal to Jemma's sense of logic to bring her around to his way of thinking. If he was rational, maybe he could convince Jemma to help herself.

Of course, that was assuming his plan would even work.

"Coulson?" he asked. "Sir, are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here, Fitz," Coulson replied over the comm.

"Sir, I was thinking…" Fitz paused as he focused on getting a wire connection soldered properly. "If this-if this doesn't work. Getting our Jem-Simmons back, I mean. If it doesn't work and Mack gets the portal open, and I convince this Simmons to come back with me...what will happen to her? She said she, um, didn't want to stay. With us-with S.H.I.E.L.D."

It took a moment for Coulson to reply. "Honestly?" he said. "I don't know. We don't have a precedent for it. And technically, legally, none of us exist anymore, but Skye could set her up with a new identity. She could start a new life."

Fitz didn't care much for that idea. "Would you want to run tests on her?"

Coulson was silent for another moment before he spoke again. "Well, seeing as Simmons is the head of our science division, that would be her call. And she's already made her wishes clear on that."

"Yeah." Fitz sighed. "She has."

"I don't get why she doesn't want to come back," Skye said, joining the conversation. "I mean, yeah, she's been stuck there for ages and she's _pissed_, I get that, but...I just thought she'd jump at the chance to come back. You know, not be alone anymore."

Fitz set his soldering iron down for a moment to pop his knuckles and flex his hands a bit. "You heard her. She said-we gave up on her."

Skye made a scoffing noise. "No we didn't, the portal just-"

"Yeah, I know, I know," Fitz said, cutting her off. "But think about it. How it-it must have looked to her." He picked his soldering iron back up and thought about how much he wanted to say, how much of himself he would lay bare in the process. "Alone, by herself, with no one to talk to. For years. It's probably...a coping mech-mech-a coping thing. It's what she told herself to get by and now she's shut everything out so, um...so she can't get hurt."

Coulson made a noncommittal noise, but there was a telltale hitch in Skye's voice. "You...sound like you're talking from experience."

Fitz grimaced as he nearly burnt his fingertip on the end of a hot wire. "Maybe I am."

He hadn't meant to sound so churlish, but he couldn't take it back now. Skye sighed. "Fitz…"

"Sometimes I wish we hadn't gone into the field, me and Simmons," he added hastily. The way Skye had looked at him as she asked if he really thought Jemma had left because she didn't love him was sticking in his memory. "Maybe then I wouldn't be...the way I am now, and Simmons-she never would have been stuck here."

"Or you'd both be dead," Skye said sharply. "You would've been stuck in some lab somewhere, and who knows if you would've survived Hydra. I mean, I never wanted any of this for either of you, but...it's better than being _dead_. It has to be. You and Simmons both have saved our lives, so many times. You guys saved _me_. I'm glad you're with us. So-don't say things like that."

"Skye's right," Coulson said. "You need to stay focused, Fitz. Get those mods done and see if you can make contact with a…" He paused, seemingly searching for the right term. "A younger Simmons. Then we'll go from there."

"Copy that. Sorry, sir." Fitz closed his eyes and took in a few slow, deep breaths. He'd let himself start to wallow again, and he really couldn't afford to do that. And Skye _was_ right. They'd done some brilliant things together before Hydra had arrived and everything had gone to hell. But there was no use feeling nostalgic for that now.

As Skye and Coulson moved on to other topics of conversation without him, Fitz let the low murmur of their voices wash over him as he set back to work. Rewiring both the screen and the tracker and adding connection ports to both of them was tricky work, and his hands were only just barely cooperating. Occasionally he glanced up at the window, keeping vague track of the sun's progress through the sky, and wondered just how long Jemma planned on being gone.

_Don't worry about her. She doesn't need you. She can take care of herself._

By the time he finished his modifications to the tracker and the screen-and cut open part of the generator's casing to get a look at its mechanics-the sunlight coming through the window in the door had dimmed significantly and he'd had to turn on a few more lamps.

"I think I'm finished," he announced, setting his tools aside. Then he stood and dusted off his jeans before stretching a bit. He'd spent far too long hunched over while working.

"Great!" Skye sounded far too enthusiastic for someone who had likely been watching his video feed for hours with no break. "Show us what you've got."

"I hope this works, Fitz." Coulson, on the other hand, sounded almost as stressed as he felt himself.

He sighed and bent to pick up the screen and the tracker, glancing toward the window as he did so. There was still no sign of Jemma. "Me too, sir."

It took a bit of fumbling, but he got the tracker plugged into the screen. It was a little wobbly-he hadn't been able to make the connection ports quite as snug as he would have liked-but it stayed. Hopefully it would be tight enough to work. He took a deep breath and switched on the tracker.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. The screen still displayed the white starkness of the portal room. But just as his hope started to sink, the tracker beeped once and the image on the screen started to fritz wildly and distort. Holding his breath, Fitz tried wiggling the tracker just a little in the hope of giving it a better connection. Then the screen went blank for a second before lighting back up with an image of the bottom of the generator-right in front of where he was standing. It was as if he was looking through a glass frame.

He could almost _hear_ Skye holding her breath too. "Did it…?"

Silently, he panned the frame around him. The generator was there, still humming and glowing light blue, but the crates and his backpack and tools were gone. When he looked straight down through it, he couldn't even see his own feet.

"I think it did," Coulson said, sounding awe-struck.

"Yeah," Fitz murmured, elation and relief both sweeping through him. He was positive he was looking at a different point in time through the screen-there was no other way to explain the absence of himself and the crates and tools. Now he just hoped he'd connected to as early a point as possible in Jemma's timestream.

He was about to turn to the door when he heard a noise: the sound of someone crying softly. Surprised, he immediately rushed to the door to look out the window, but Jemma wasn't there. His heart in his throat, Fitz then swung around to hold the screen up toward the back of room, near the cot and the other stack of crates. And there she was.

Jemma. _His_ Jemma. Half turned away from him, arms hugging herself, head bowed as her shoulders shook. Feeling his mouth go dry, Fitz took a small step forward, keeping the screen held up so he could see her. "Jem-Jemma?"

She gasped as she looked up, startled. Her eyes were wide, almost desperate, and her cheeks were wet with tears."Fitz?" she hiccuped, disbelief warring with hope in her voice as she looked around. "Fitz, is that you?"

Any hope Fitz had of being logical and detached flew right out the window, especially when he saw the bruising and cuts around the left side of her face. "Yeah, Jem, it's me," he said hoarsely, taking another step toward her. "Can-can you see me?"

On the screen, Jemma looked around again until she seemed to look right at him; then her mouth opened slightly as she walked forward as well. "Yes, I...where are you?"

Fitz wondered if she was seeing the 'window' that the older Jemma had described. "Same place as you," he said. "Just-a little bit ahead."

Jemma sniffled and wiped at her cheeks with her hands, blinking several times. "You mean..._you're_ in the future now? How did that happen?"

He couldn't help but smile a little at her question-of course she would want to know all the reasons behind everything-and his heart ached that he couldn't just reach out and touch her, take her hand, squeeze her shoulder, _anything_ to reassure her and prove to himself that she was real. "It's, um-it's a bit of a story, actually," he said, reaching back with one hand to scratch at his neck. "But I'm not sure how much I should-"

Suddenly the door burst open and Jemma, older Jemma, came storming back in. "I've cleared out all the robots I could find," she said as Fitz jumped and clutched the screen to his chest. She took one look at him and read his posture like an open book. "You look guilty," she said, eyes wary as she leaned her staff against the wall. "What did you do?"

Fitz swallowed and stared at her, unsure of how to say it. "Tell her," Skye said in his ear. "Tell her you found younger Simmons."

He took a deep breath to center himself. "Did you, um-change your mind? Will you let me help you?"

Jemma narrowed her eyes at him before she looked away again. "I won't help you," she said after a brief pause.

Fitz made a frustrated noise and moved back into her line of sight. "Look me in the eye when you say it, then."

After another pause, Jemma looked up at him. She didn't look angry the way she had before, though; she just looked tired and worn. But her voice was firm. "I won't help you. It's _my_ life."

"Fitz?" The younger Jemma's voice was muffled by his tactical vest, but still loud enough for them both to hear. "What's going on?"

Jemma's gaze snapped down to the screen Fitz was hugging to his chest, and her expression was difficult to read; he thought it hovered somewhere between curiosity and betrayal. This was a crucial moment. He could feel it. Everything boiled down to this, convincing the Jemma who had spent years alone that her life was worth giving up in order to save her younger self. To spare her the misery of a lifetime alone. So he tried to put every ounce of conviction and love-yes, even love-that he felt into his eyes and his words as she looked back up at him.

"She knows I'm here," he said quietly, keeping his eyes steady on hers. "So...please. You don't ha-have to say what you remember hearing, because it's already changed for her." He turned the screen around in his hands before passing it over to her, indicating that she should hold it up in the direction of the cot. Then he reached around her to pick up her staff and headed for the door. He was a little hesitant to leave the two Jemmas alone-and Christ that was a strange thing to even think, _the two Jemmas-_-because he wasn't sure how either of them would react to speaking with each other. All the same, though, it wasn't a conversation he felt he needed to be around for.

-:-

"Fitz, wait…" Jemma took a few steps toward the small window-for lack of a better term-that had appeared in mid-air at face level. The view within it had gone dark and blurry for a few moments and she had heard someone talking; then suddenly someone else's face had appeared. She edged carefully closer as the newcomer came into focus. "Where…" Then she sucked in a breath. "Are you-are you _me?_"

The face in the window nodded. "Yes. Twenty-six years in the future."

Jemma's mind reeled. She'd been at the facility for a little over a month by her estimation, only having gone through the final door and cut off from the portal a few days previously. The idea that she would be stranded for years was both bleak and disturbing, on several different levels, and really-it was very odd, looking at what she would become two and a half decades in the future. _Talking_ to herself, too. It shouldn't have been scientifically possible, yet there they were.

"Why are you-why am _I _still here?" she asked. "Why did it take so long for Fitz to get here? He looked…" She gestured a bit uselessly. "He still looks the same as he did the last time I saw him."

"Because he gave up on me," her older self said roughly, her gaze falling off to the side. "The whole team did. They couldn't find a way to fix things so they gave up and left me here."

Jemma frowned, feeling a bit lost. "But Fitz wouldn't...he said he was going to come get me," she said, almost as if she was trying to convince herself of it. "He wouldn't just give up on me."

Her older self huffed, a short, sharp bark of a laugh. "Would he? He already _has_. He hated you-hated me, before I came here. He could barely stand talking to me. He left to go to the garage because he didn't want to be around me anymore. You _know_ that. He gave up on me long before this ever happened."

Jemma knew that what her older self was saying was true, in a way. She knew just how broken her relationship with Fitz was, how far they had fallen-and she would be lying if she said she hadn't felt at least a little abandoned when he'd left the lab for the garage. But all she could think of was how he had looked on the other side of the portal, staring at her with one hand raised as if he could bridge the gap between them and pull her back to safety himself. She could still see, _feel_ the intensity of his eyes on her, calming her fears and anchoring her back to reality. It made her think of the way he'd looked at her a lifetime ago, breaking quarantine and telling her that they would _fix this, together_. And she'd trusted him, both times.

"No," she said quietly, shaking her head. "Fitz promised. Something must have gone wrong."

The older Jemma finally looked back at her. "You did." At her confused look, she added, "Well, I did. Me, this version of you. He thinks he's figured out a way to save you, but I won't help him. I refuse to."

Jemma balked. "Why?"

"Because if he does save you, I'll cease to exist." Her chin had lifted slightly, a stubborn set to her mouth that almost dared Jemma to deny her. "Everything I've done for the past twenty-six years, half of my entire life, will be gone-erased-rewritten because I'll never have been trapped here. I'll _die_. I remember having this conversation, when I was you, still young. I refused to help myself then and I'm still refusing to help now."

"Even if it means spending twenty-six years alone?" Jemma asked.

Her older self nodded firmly. "It's been a nightmare, but it's _mine_. I refuse to give up my own life."

"But it's not just you, is it? Your decision there, in the future where you are, affects _me_ now." Maybe if she tried applying logic from another angle, she could convince herself. "_You_ refusing to help condemns _me_ to all of those years here."

She looked unmoved. "You _are_ me. And when it's your turn to have this conversation again from my end, you'll make the same choice. You won't want to die. Nothing you say will change my mind."

Maybe her older self didn't want to die, but Jemma was certain she didn't want to spend twenty-six years alone even more than that. If logic wouldn't sway her… "Nothing?"

She nodded again.

Jemma swallowed. _Right._ "What about Fitz?"

-:-

"What do you think they're talking about in there?"

"I don't know." Fitz was sitting on the ground with his back against the wall of the building, Jemma's staff balanced across his knees. This way, his rear was protected and he had quick access to the staff in case any robots showed up. "Probably...how it's scien-sci-how it's impossible to talk to yourself like that."

Skye hummed a bit, and in his mind's eye Fitz could see her nodding in agreement. "I can see that," she said lightly. "She _would_ focus on the science. You two are the biggest nerds when it comes to that."

He breathed a quiet laugh, his lips quirking in an almost-smile. Brief flashes of sunlit days and late nights and Jemma smiling as she bent over a microscope flitted through his mind. "She's always been like that."

"You have too," Skye countered. "At least for as long as I've known you. You still are-you've got all those nerdy science magazines, I saw your desk when you were in the lab."

Fitz's mouth twitched again as he tilted his head back to rest against the wall. "Guilty as charged," he murmured, staring up at the sky. The sun was just starting to sink below the horizon.

There was a sudden burst of excited chatter on Skye's end. "What? Oh-oh, holy crap," she said. "Fitz, Mack says he's got the portal figured out."

He lifted his head back up, his hands clenching tightly around the staff. "Really?"

"Yeah!" More chatter; Fitz could pick out Mack's baritone amongst it. "He says we can give it a try now, if we want. Ready, AC?"

"Give it a shot," Coulson said. "We don't have anything else to lose at this point."

"Gotcha." Skye sounded both excited and nervous.

"Here goes nothing," Mack said in the background.

Fitz listened, holding his breath. After a few seconds, he heard the whine of the portal console rev up and grow louder, followed by its signature pinging noise. Then there was a great _whoosh_, like someone blowing air into a microphone, and suddenly everyone was shouting.

"What? What is it?" Like him, Coulson didn't have a video feed to the cave. "Did it work?"

Someone in the cave was laughing; it sounded like Mack. "Oh yeah," Skye said, sounding extremely pleased. "It worked."

-:-

Older Jemma didn't look impressed. "What _about_ Fitz?"

She twisted her hands together a bit. "It's just...well, you said you wouldn't help me. But what about you? I'm sure he's found a way out. Will you go with him?"

The older woman's eyes hardened. "No."

Jemma's mouth fell open. "Why not? So, what, you're just going to live out your days here, alone? I know you've got to be miserable. _I'm_ miserable, and I've only been here for a month."

"But it would be _my_ choice," she shot back. "I won't let anyone force me to do anything, and I won't go back to S.H.I.E.L.D. Not after this."

Jemma was silent for a moment. She knew how she felt in _her_ heart. She could only hope that a quarter-century of solitude hadn't completely erased all of it from her older self. "You can't leave Fitz," she said. "Not again."

Her older self shook her head. "I can. Besides, you _know_ he's been doing better without you. His speaking's improving, along with his motor skills, and he's got Mack now. He doesn't need you. You only make him worse."

Jemma swallowed and looked down, feeling the sting of tears prick at her eyes. Everything she was saying was everything she'd already told herself a thousand times during her worst moments, when doubt and despair choked her and nearly made it impossible to function. Her fears had become truths for the older Jemma; years of no one but herself for company had fed those thoughts and nurtured them until they were incontrovertible fact. She couldn't believe it.

"No," she sniffled, and looked back up, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. "I won't accept that. I know-I know things have been difficult between me and Fitz. _God_, I know. But...you remember San Juan, don't you?" Her older self nodded. "Then you remember we managed to work together. It was...almost like it used to be. We _worked_. And the way he held me-"

"You know it was only to keep you from going after Trip," older Jemma said flatly.

"But he _did_." For once, she allowed herself to remember it as sensations and emotions, rather than logistics. Fitz's arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders, the heat of him through his shirt burning her, his heart beating rapidly in his chest as stone and dust fell around them. The rasp of his stubble pressed against her temple and the overwhelming feeling of _home_. "He wouldn't have done it if he didn't care," she said. "He held on longer than he should have. And he…"

Once again, she saw his face through the portal, bathed in blue light and oh so determined.

"There's still hope," she continued. "There _has_ to be. Ten years together can't just-disappear like that. It can't go away completely. There's nothing in the world that could destroy...we still...he's…"

"But it _did_ go away," her older self said. She looked less bitter now, more tired. "And you tried to bring it back. But he didn't want to."

She could feel another wave of tears coming on, and took a moment to breathe slowly and will them away. "Even so," she finally said, "you can't leave him again. It was hard enough to do it the first time; I couldn't bear it again. Maybe he won't accept it, but I know I would never stop trying to help him. Never."

Older Jemma frowned. "You want me to give up my life, erase my existence, all to give you the chance to stay with Fitz when he doesn't even want you anymore."

She nodded. "You won't spend a lifetime alone here. Just two months, maybe. And Fitz is already there with you-that's proof that he still cares, even if it's just a little bit." She paused. "I...I know how I feel about him. Surely you still feel the same. Even after all this time."

Her older self looked down for a long moment, swallowing. When she looked back up, her eyes had gone soft. "Yes," she said quietly.

Jemma nodded again, slowly. "Then you know what you have to do."

-:-

The sky was just starting to streak with the inky blues and purples of twilight when the door next to Fitz opened and Jemma stepped out. He looked up at her and immediately went to stand, brushing off his jeans as he did so. She was looking at him funny, in a way he didn't think he'd ever seen her look at him before-either version of her. Intense, focused, like he held all the answers to every question in the universe.

"Um. Are-are you alright?" he asked, frowning. She wasn't holding the screen. "Did, um, did the connection go bad?"

Jemma shook her head. "No. It's still working. I just left it inside." Even her voice sounded a little different-less gruff, more open. "Were you able to find a way out of here while I was gone on patrol?"

"Er-yes." He nodded. "I'm pretty sure I found a way to boost the signal on the-the tracker, to get a lock on younger you, and-Mack's got the portal working. We-we can leave any time we want, now." He frowned again as a faint sort of dread settled in his stomach. "What happened in there, did you make a-um-are you going to come with me?" He expected _no_, was trying to prepare himself for it and the inevitable argument that would ensue. But Jemma surprised him. She took a step forward.

"Do you still want to try and rescue the younger version of me?" she asked.

Fitz opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He knew what _he_ wanted to do, but he was afraid of giving what she would consider the wrong answer. "Well," he hedged, not quite able to meet her eyes, "um. I just want to get _you_ back. You, or her. Doesn't matter."

"But you'd prefer her. Younger me." She said it as a statement of fact, not a question. Strangely enough, she didn't sound bitter either, like he'd expected.

It was enough to get Fitz to look back up at her. He swallowed heavily. "Yes."

The impossible happened: Jemma _smiled_. His eyes widened.

"Then let's go get her," she said.


	6. Chapter 6

"Okay, so what we're doing here is making a-a, um, paradox," Fitz said excitedly. He grabbed a wrench and some cables from his backpack and ran back to the side of the generator, kneeling down to look inside the hole he'd cut out of the casing earlier. "We're going to bring younger you, younger Jemma, to where we are in-in the timestream. All of the laws of physics say this shouldn't even be possible. But, um, I've got a good feeling about it."

Jemma, who was standing back just far enough to keep out of his way but close enough to help if needed, rolled her eyes-but she was still smiling a little. "The laws of physics don't take alien technology into account, Fitz."

"I know." He looked up from the generator to flash her a quick smile, then went back to hooking the cables up to the generator's main power source. "Also doesn't take in-in-it doesn't include my, um…unappreciated genius."

A glance back at Jemma showed that she was smiling widely now, and it transformed her face into something beautiful, even with the added years. Skye laughed over the comm, and he heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like Hunter making an exaggerated gagging sound. It was funny in a way, how the sudden loss of the tension between him and Jemma had him feeling lighter and more energetic and _confident_ than he had in almost a year. He still wasn't firing on all cylinders, but if he could hold on to this-if he and Jemma both could, if everything worked and they made it back home-then maybe…just maybe, there was some hope left for them after all.

After Jemma had agreed to help him, they'd gone back inside to finish making the necessary modifications to the generator and come up with a plan of action. Younger Jemma, who they were maintaining contact with through the screen, would pipe up from time to time with comments. It was strange when both Jemmas would talk; it was sort like hearing her in stereo.

"Okay, Fitz, explain this to me one more time," Coulson said over the comm. "So we can get everything ready on our end."

Fitz connected the last of the cables and stood, picking the screen up off of the top of the generator. "Going over everything for Coulson," he told Jemma. Then he held up the screen so he could see her younger self. "Still with us?" She gave him a thumbs-up, looking nervous but eager. Fitz smiled, hoping to reassure her, and started gathering up his tools to pack them away in his backpack. "Right. So, basically, we're changing Jemma's future. Originally, she-um, in the past, her future self-Jemma now-told her that she wouldn't help."

"Now I've changed my mind," Jemma added as Fitz stepped past her to grab his backpack. "I'm helping, even though every law of science says that changing the future isn't possible."

"Yes, except," Fitz cut in as he zipped his backpack shut and carried it back to the generator, "_I _believe that knowing your own future is-is what helps you to, ah, actually change it."

"That, and being brilliant as well," Jemma said, with just a hint of smugness.

Fitz scrunched his face at her. Was she-? No, of course she wasn't. "Well, there's two of you now, so...yeah. Double the brilliance."

A groan came over the comm. "Bloody hell, is _this _what they were like?" he could hear Hunter ask.

Skye laughed. "Oh, this is nothing. Wait until they start talking at the same time and finishing each others' sentences."

Fitz felt a small bloom of warmth in his heart; for once, the memories of how he and Jemma had been before the med pod were sweet instead of bitter. "Anyway, we're using the generator to, uh, boost the signal on the tracker, and get a lock on younger Jemma. Then they'll use a shared memory or thought, something they b-both know, to boost that lock." He gestured with the screen. "And since the, um-the walls of the timestream-if you want to call them that-since they're thinner here, because Jemma has a strong-a big presence here, hopefully we can bring her through to where we are."

"And that's the paradox," older Jemma said.

Fitz nodded as he pointed at her. "Right. Having two Jemmas in the-the same place is technically like...cheating. I don't know how long we'll have to get back to the portal before things get weird."

"Weird, how?" Coulson asked.

"Well, sir...I don't know." Fitz winced and rubbed at the back of his neck. "Seeing as we-we've never done this before, anything could happen. Worst case scenario, this universe-um-it collapses. Best? The Jemma with me right now just...vanishes." He looked up at her and frowned.

She frowned back before looking briefly away. It didn't feel much like an avoidance tactic, as it had earlier, but more like someone coming to terms with their own mortality.

"Either way," Fitz concluded, "you'll probably want to, to send Bobbi through once we've got younger Jemma here. So we can get back as soon as possible."

"Got it," Skye said. "She's prepped and ready to go as soon as Mack can open the portal back up."

"About all that…" Jemma said, taking a step forward. Her eyes were determined again. "I-I want you to take me with you."

Fitz's jaw dropped slightly. "What?" he sputtered, feeling betrayed. "You agreed-"

"I did, I know. I still am." She clenched her fists, as if preparing for a fight. "But if we're able to bring younger me over, and I'm still here...I want to come with you both. I meant it when I said I didn't want to die."

"Can she even do that?" Skye wondered aloud as Fitz shook his head, his mind racing.

"Jemma, I...I don't even know if this will work. The-the paradox might not hold." He didn't want to get her hopes up. "And then there would be two of you back home. Permanently."

She nodded. "I know. That way, we both would get to live. But I wouldn't stay and complicate things. I'd-leave, maybe do some traveling. Younger me could stay with S.H.I.E.L.D. and have the life she was meant to have." When Fitz still didn't look convinced, her eyes turned pleading. "You could try, at least."

Finally, Fitz nodded. "I can try," he confirmed. "But-um-like I said...it might not work."

"All I ask is that you try," Jemma said.

He nodded again, then took a deep breath. "Right. Coulson-sir-I think we're ready." There was really nothing else left to do.

"Copy that," Coulson said briskly. "Skye, how are things on your end?"

It was a few seconds before she replied. "We're good to go, AC," she said. "Mack's got the portal ready to open and Bobbi's set too. Your move, Fitz."

He raised an eyebrow at Jemma. "Ready?" he asked. He expected her to nod, but instead she hesitated. He frowned. "Jemma?"

She looked like she was wrestling with a decision. She took a step toward him, stopped, then finished crossing the distance between them. "Fitz," she said, and she sounded unsure. "If this doesn't work…"

"It will," he said, more confidently than he actually felt. He wasn't sure where her sudden nerves had sprung from, but he wanted to reassure her.

"But if it doesn't." Jemma shook her head slightly before swallowing. Then, in one swift move, she pulled his glasses from his face and moved in close to press her lips to his.

Fitz flinched in shock. It was hard, rushed, almost desperate, and before he had time to even think about kissing her back, it was over. Jemma stepped away and wordlessly handed him his glasses before going back to where she'd been standing before.

"What just happened?" Skye demanded over the comm, her voice shrill.

"Uh," Fitz began, fumbling to get his glasses back on, but Jemma cut over him.

"Nothing," she said, and she was back to the brisk efficiency that seemed to be her norm. "I'm ready now."

Fitz stared at her with furrowed brows, lips tingling, but she wouldn't look back at him. After a brief pause he shook his head as if to clear it. He couldn't focus on what she had just done, no matter how much he wanted to demand answers. "Right. Um." He held the screen up so he could see younger Jemma. "What about you?"

"I'm ready," she said. She still looked anxious. "And I'm standing by the door. Just thought you should know-so I don't land on top of anything."

Older Jemma nodded in understanding and moved a few steps toward the cot. "I'm out of the way."

"Good." Fitz took another deep breath. "Well-here...here we go."

Taking one last look at younger Jemma, he set the screen down on top of the generator and bent to pick up the cables he'd plugged into the power source. Sorting them in his hand, he took one and plugged it into the side of the tracker. The generator immediately began to whine, and it only got worse as he finished plugging the cables into both the tracker and the screen.

"Right!" he said, shouting to be heard over the increased noise. "Jemma, both of you-think of your shared memory, your thought. Remember, it has to-to be the most important thought you've ever had!"

"Shared memory," older Jemma repeated. "Okay, I've got it."

"Concentrate-as hard as you can!" Fitz looked over at Jemma. She'd closed her eyes and her mouth was moving, but he couldn't hear her over the whirring of the generator. It looked like she was repeating a phrase, over and over.

A burst of sparks spit out from the inside of the console as the generator started to vibrate. Fitz jumped back, trying to avoid getting his jeans singed, and cursed under his breath. He kept looking back to the empty space by the door, but nothing was there yet. After another shower of sparks and some worrisome noises from the generator, he picked up the screen and moved behind it so could look for younger Jemma. It was fritzing wildly; she was barely visible, standing still near the door. He clenched his jaw, silently willing everything to work.

Then something appeared in front of him, like an expanding cloud of mist coalescing into something solid and real. It was younger Jemma, mirroring her older self's stance, mouthing words to herself.

"It's working!" Skye yelled over the comm, just as the generator sparked again and began rattling hard enough to shake the entire building. Fitz grimaced and dropped the screen on top of the generator again, gripping the corner of it with both hands in an effort to stay standing. Near the cot, older Jemma had spread her arms and feet out for balance, still repeating her chosen words to herself.

"Come on, come on, hold together," Fitz muttered, bracing for the worst.

Younger Jemma blinked in and out of sight several heart-stopping times before finally coming into focus, her body casting a shadow on the floor from the light of the lamps. Behind Fitz, the generator gave one final, violent shudder before cutting out in the largest display of sparks and smoke yet, forcing him to jump away from it again. The screen distorted sharply before the glass cracked and the tracker split down the middle.

And then there was silence. Fitz froze, not daring to breathe until he was sure it was over. He looked at the generator, which was still smoking and sparking quietly, before looking at older Jemma. She was holding still the same way he was, staring at him with wide-eyed wariness. Then he slid his eyes over to younger Jemma.

She was staring at him too, but her gaze was hopeful, along with something else he couldn't quite identify. When their eyes met, she let out a breath that was more like a quiet, incredulous laugh. He felt something in him relax, and he smiled back at her. _It worked._

Then she gave a small cry and launched herself forward to throw her arms around his neck. He staggered back a step in surprise before his arms automatically went around her in return, and he allowed himself a moment to revel in it, in her. Face buried in her shoulder, arms as tight as they could go, breathing in her scent and her warmth and her everything, searing the feeling of her in his arms into his memory. For a moment, they weren't broken. They were perfect.

The sound of someone clearing their throat broke them apart. Jemma pulled away from him, ducking her head a bit, and turned to look behind her. Her older self was watching them carefully, looking a little uneasy. Fitz looked between the two of them for a moment before coughing quietly.

"Right. So," he said, gesturing toward older Jemma, "this is...you, and...you. Yeah."

Younger Jemma took a few steps toward her older self, both of them looking the other over as if sizing them up. "This is so weird," Skye muttered, just as both Jemmas said, "Wow."

"Okay, so it worked," Coulson said, attempting to steer them all back on track. "What's your status?"

Fitz raised his eyebrows as he looked around the room. "I think we're good, sir," he replied. "Nothing seems to be exploding or-or collapsing. But I don't think we need to waste any time. Skye, how soon can you get the, um, the portal open?"

"Mack's firing it up right now," she said, and no sooner were the words out of her mouth did he hear the sound of the console revving up. After it pinged, she added, "Sending Bobbi through."

After a moment there was a crackle of static over his comm, and then Bobbi's voice was in his ear, calm and confident. "I'm here."

"Bobbi's here," Fitz said to the two Jemmas, who both nodded as he bent down to pick his backpack up and slide his arms through the straps. "Bobbi-go through the room after the one you're in right now, and then-then there will be a long hallway. You want the door at the end. That-that's the one you need to keep open for us."

"Got it." He could tell from the way she was breathing that Bobbi was moving quickly.

Older Jemma came to stand next to him-younger Jemma, he noticed, had flattened herself against the wall as her older self went past, obviously not wanting to risk touching her counterpart lest she spark a dimension collapse. "We'll probably run into some robots," older Jemma said. "They first appeared for me when I went through that door, and I saw them turn up as soon as Fitz went through it too. I'm willing it will be the same for Bobbi-so we should be prepared. Did she catch all that?"

"Yes," Bobbi said. "I heard her."

Fitz nodded, trying to catch older Jemma's eyes-he was still full of questions about that kiss-but she still wouldn't quite look at him. "Yeah, she-she got it."

She smiled grimly and opened the door before unclipping her sword and thumbing the power button. "I'll lead the way. You-" She paused as she looked at her younger self, still unsure how to address her. "You stick with Fitz."

Younger Jemma nodded, licking her lips nervously as she looked at him. Fitz smiled at her reassuringly and almost held out his hand for her to take, but instead let it hover at the small of her back as he let her go out the door ahead of him. Then they were jogging across the grass under an early evening sky, the crackling light of Jemma's sword casting eerie shadows all around them. Fitz stayed alert as they ran, listening for any tell-tale pops, and was surprised when they made it back to the main building without trouble.

They raced through the antechamber and into the main circular room. Fitz had just enough time to see Bobbi, bracing her weight against the open door, staves in one hand-he had never been more glad to see her-before four robots materialized in front of them with a flash of blue light, two to each side of the central kiosk.

Older Jemma skidded to a halt, sword raised; Fitz managed to catch younger Jemma by the shoulders and pull her back against him before she could slam into her older self.

"Candidates have been located."

"I'll take out the one on the outside left," older Jemma said, low and fast. "Run through the gap and get to the door; then I'll worry about the others."

"Candidates will now be scanned."

"Are you sure?" younger Jemma asked, her body tensed like a coil ready to spring. Across the room, Bobbi was looking between the two sets of robots, her mouth pressed down into a thin line.

"Positive," older Jemma said, and ran at the robot she'd indicated. When she was within striking distance, she spun in a quick circle, both her sword and her staff flying in a one-two slashing combination. The robot's head fell off mid-scan, severed cleanly at the neck; then the body toppled to the ground. "Go!" she yelled back at them, already turning to the next robot. Now that one of their number was down, their guns were sliding out from behind their faceplates, all pleasantries forgotten.

Fitz pushed younger Jemma ahead of him, and they both ran for Bobbi and the door, jumping over the remains of the first robot as they went. When they squeezed past Bobbi into the hallway, she held up a hand for them to wait. She looked like she wanted to go take care of the other two robots, but older Jemma was already on it, charging across the room to lay into both of them at the same time in a flurry of spins and thrusts. Crouched down next to him, younger Jemma watched in awe. Bobbi looked impressed.

"Her form's a bit choppy," she said, "but I like it. She's good."

"Yeah, because she's a total _badass_," Skye said over the comm. "I want to shake her hand."

Fitz snuck a look at the Jemma next to him. She was still watching her older self in fascination, and he could practically see the gears turning in her head as she took stock of all the new abilities she'd picked up. Then, as if feeling his eyes on her, she turned her head slightly to look back at him, and gave him a hesitant smile. It only widened when he smiled back at her, and he felt his heart skip in his chest.

Older Jemma moved quickly to join them once all the robots were down, and took the weight of the door as Bobbi straightened to move deeper into the hallway past Fitz and younger Jemma. The door closed behind them, and Fitz breathed a sigh of relief. The hard part-getting through the door-was over. They wouldn't have any problems reaching the portal.

_Or not-_-as they all turned to face down the hallway, four more robots appeared, their guns already locked and loaded. Bobbi's fingers flexed around her staves.

"I'll take point," she said grimly, and started toward them.

Fitz looked back at older Jemma. "I'll cover your backs," she said. "Follow her and stay close, but be careful. They're ready to shoot." She raised her sword. "Okay-_go_."

Like he had before, Fitz pushed younger Jemma ahead of him, but once they were both up and moving he kept pace with her, their shoulders bumping. Ahead of them, Bobbi had just reached the first robot.

"Candidates will be termi-"

She jammed one of her staves directly into the base of the gun, dodging to the side as it discharged a shot. Fitz and Jemma stopped and quickly pressed against the wall as it blasted a tiny crater in the floor at their feet, then ducked as another robot sent a second shot aimed at their heads. Bobbi bounced back and kicked the lead robot square in the center of the chest, knocking it over. Fitz took the opportunity to move forward, pulling Jemma with him. They crossed to the opposite side of the hall; a glance back showed older Jemma several paces behind them, walking slowly and on high alert. Then there was sudden burst of popping noises, and when he looked back again, Jemma was turning to face the four robots that had just appeared behind her. Up ahead, three more joined the robots that Bobbi was fighting.

Beside him, younger Jemma's eyes were wide. "Why are there so many?" she shouted, her fingers digging into his arm. "There were never this many at once when I first ran into them!"

"They might know we're escaping," older Jemma yelled back, swinging her sword. "We weren't supposed to get through the door!"

From there, it was chaos. Bobbi and older Jemma were both in constant motion, expertly dodging energy blasts while hacking and slashing at every new robot that appeared. Fitz and younger Jemma moved down the hallway in fits and spurts, ducking and pulling each other out of harm's way, never once letting go of the other. By the time they finally reached the door to the first portal room, the hallway was littered with broken robots, a faint haze of smoke in the air, thick with the smell of ozone. Bobbi paused to make sure older Jemma had her remaining robots well in hand before turning and running ahead to check the last room. Fitz and younger Jemma followed.

Through the doorway, he could see the portal. It was open, and he could just make out Skye and May standing on the other side. Behind them, the rest of the cave room faded into darkness. His heart sped up. This was it-he could see the end. It was a straight shot to the portal. _They were going to make it._

Just as Jemma ran through the door, Fitz hot on her heels, a robot suddenly teleported in between her and Bobbi. She shrieked and tried to stop and pull up short, but it was too late. The robot had its hand raised and Jemma got a face full of it, the anaesthetic in its fleshy skin knocking her out instantly. She collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

Fitz barely had any time to react. He only just managed to catch her around the waist before her weight brought him to his knees; then he was shifting her in his arms so he could see her face, muttering "no, no, _no_" in a panic as Bobbi bodyslammed the robot above them. Behind him, he could hear footsteps entering the room followed by three more popping sounds.

"Fitz!" He jerked his head up. Bobbi was jamming both of her staves into the face of the robot she'd just shoved away. "Take her and run! I'll cover you!"

He glanced back at older Jemma-she was fighting the three robots that had just appeared-before moving to slide his arms around younger Jemma's shoulders and beneath her knees, picking her up and struggling to his feet. He ignored the way her head lolled against his shoulder, ignored the way her arm hung limply. He ignored how small and slight she felt in his arms, how sick to his stomach he felt. He just nodded at Bobbi and started running.

The room seemed to stretch out before him. He was aware of Bobbi running alongside him, energy beams flying past on either side of them, but he kept his eyes trained firmly on the portal, trusting her to handle any more threats that came their way. His mind was consumed with just one thought: _get Jemma to safety. _If he failed at this, failed _her_, what good was he?

Bobbi stopped right at the side of the portal, but Fitz ran straight through it, not even bothering to slow down. Like it had when he passed through before, his body erupted into a storm of tingles. The sensation nearly caused him to stumble and drop Jemma, but Skye and Hunter were standing ready to catch him, and together they got him away from the portal so he could lay Jemma down on the ground. His hands immediately started fluttering over her, unsure of what to do. His eyes were fixed on her face, staring at the bruises that contrasted sharply with her pale skin.

Skye had put two fingers to the pulse point on Jemma's neck. "She's fine, Fitz, she's here," she said in a rush, grabbing his shoulder with her free hand. "She's fine. You did it."

He let out a breath, his heart pounding. He could hear Bobbi and Coulson talking over the comm; a second later there was a rush of noise, and then Bobbi was speaking right behind him.

"I'm back, Coulson," she said, out of breath. "Other Simmons is right behind me, she's on her way now-"

The console blared a loud alarm, one they hadn't heard before. Everyone in the cave jumped and turned to look. Older Jemma had just entered the portal room and, seeing that the coast was clear, had tossed her weapons aside and was running for the portal.

"What's is that, what's happening?" Skye cried.

Fitz watched Jemma run. _Come on_, he thought, even as the alarm intensified. _You can make it_.

Suddenly, without warning, May reached over and slammed her hand down on a row of console buttons. The portal's glow immediately changed from blue to red and the alarm quieted, but didn't stop completely. Jemma stopped just in front of the portal and jumped back as if she had been shocked-just like she had hours ago for him, but years for her.

An entirely different kind of shock was running through Fitz. "What the _hell_ are you doing?" he shouted, just as Skye yelled, "_May?!_"

On the other side of the portal, Jemma was yelling too. "_May! Let me through!_"

May's face was hard. "I can't let her come through."

Fitz stood up and took two steps toward her, his fists clenched. "Yes, you can! Just-just open it back up, let her through."

"_Fitz! Fix the portal, let me through! Fitz!_"

May shook her head, and there was something like horrible regret in her eyes. "I can't. You _know_ I can't."

"You _can_." He could feel his eyes stinging, could feel that tell-tale tickle in his nose that meant tears were coming. He took another step forward, trying to get to the console, but May-whose hand was still covering the buttons she'd pushed-moved to block him with her body. "Why are you doing this?"

"_Fitz! Please, you promised!_"

May shook her head again, keeping her eyes locked on his. "You said it yourself, Fitz," she said. "The paradox won't hold. There was never supposed to be more than one Simmons and somehow, the portal knows it. The technology must have scanned or registered her somehow when you carried the younger Simmons through, and now it's going haywire. We don't know what will happen if she crosses over, but judging by these alarms it can't be good. We can't risk it. It's a danger to the entire team."

"But…" Fitz swallowed thickly and looked over at the portal in despair. Jemma was still standing there, eyes wide, begging to be let through. "She'll die if-if we don't."

"She'll die here, too," May said, but her voice was quieter now, gentler. "Somehow, eventually. We all will. But there can only be one Simmons here. Deep down inside, I think you know that." She paused. "It's up to you to decide which one."

Fitz's eyes widened in horror. "But-I can't…" He looked away from Jemma at the portal, to the Jemma who was still lying unconscious on the cave floor. They were both Jemma, both the woman he loved. It was an impossible choice; he _couldn't_ pick. Either one would feel like a betrayal. He felt himself go numb as panic and desperation rose within him again, making him feel light-headed and nauseous. He couldn't pick. He _couldn't_. Helpless, he looked up. Mack was standing next to the console, his eyes filled with nothing but sympathy. Bobbi and Hunter were kneeling next to Jemma on the ground, and for once there was nothing sullen or sarcastic about the other man's expression. Next to them stood Skye, looking just as heartbroken as he felt.

"You completed your mission," Coulson said in his ear. His voice was low and solemn. "You brought Simmons back. The other Simmons…" He fell silent for a moment. "Let her go, Fitz."

There was no use in pretending he wasn't crying, now. His vision blurry with tears, he bowed his head and turned away from everyone, trying to hold on to at least a scrap of his dignity.

"Fitz."

It was older Jemma again, but she was no longer begging. The fight had gone out of her voice. When he looked up at her, she was standing very still, her hands hanging loosely at her sides. "Fitz...come here. Please."

He hesitated, but when May nodded at him he moved until he was standing just across the portal from her, as close as he dared, just like he had the last time. She was watching him closely, tears on her face.

"I'm sorry," he choked out, before she could say anything. "I'm sorry. The-the paradox, it won't-I can't-"

"I know," Jemma said quietly, swallowing. "And-I know I said I didn't want to die, and I meant it. But...I think this is probably for the best." She attempted to smile, but it was small and strained.

Fitz felt his stomach lurch, and the tears finally spilled over. "Don't-don't say that," he whispered. "You're still Jemma, and I, I don't-I don't want-"

She smiled again, and this time it looked brave. "Fitz, please." She reached a hand out as if she meant to touch his face, but dropped it. She couldn't reach him. "If it had been me, I think-it might have been difficult. But this way, it's a second chance. For both her _and_ for you." At his questioning look, she tilted her head. "She still needs you, Fitz. Don't think for one second that she ever stopped."

Oh, how he wanted to believe her. Fitz knew he could trust this Jemma, because she had let down her own carefully-constructed walls for him, but it was hard. Nothing could fill all the months of silence that existed between them, and nothing could erase the pain he still keenly felt whenever he thought about how she had left him. It still felt insurmountable. But if she believed there was still hope, he could believe too. He could try.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and swiped at the tears on his cheeks. He didn't know what else he could say. "I wish there was another way."

"I wish there was, too," Jemma said. "But you'll be okay. And so will I." She looked briefly down then, taking a deep breath, and when she looked back up, her eyes were bright. "Fitz, I…"

He looked back at her, his breath caught in his throat. But after a moment, she just sighed. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you for giving me hope when I had none."

Fitz's heart thudded to a halt in his chest. Jemma smiled at him again, then looked to the side as three robots appeared in the room behind her. She nodded slightly to herself, then gave him one last smile before turning to face the robots, her shoulders squared and her chin high. They were already walking toward her, guns visibly charging.

He backed away from the portal a few steps, feeling sick. "Close the portal," he said hoarsely. "I-I can't watch this."

Mack said something, too quiet for him to hear, and May murmured, "Do it."

Fitz was certain that his last look at the older Jemma-brave and defiant and incredible, right to the very end-would stay with him until the day he died.

The portal blinked out and the silence that followed felt like it would crush him.


	7. Chapter 7

Fitz sat in a chair in one of the Bus's med pods, face pensive. They were enroute back to the Playground but still had at least two hours until they landed. Everyone else was on the upper levels of the plane, either resting or getting started on their debriefs. Coulson had let him stay with Jemma, though, both because he knew Fitz would be loathe to leave her side and because she would need someone there when she woke up.

Bobbi's assessment of Jemma in the cave was that she was fine, just knocked out. She'd had considerably more contact with the robot's hand than Fitz had, so it seemed safe to assume that she would suffer the effects longer.

Before they left the cave, May had taken a pistol and shot the console several more times in an attempt to damage it beyond repair; then, she and Hunter had rigged a small amount of explosives to collapse the entrance to the cave itself. They wanted to ensure that it would not be easy to get back into. After that they'd walked back to the Bus in somber silence, Mack carrying Jemma and Fitz carrying his backpack and the D.W.A.R.F. case.

It was strange, Fitz thought. He had seen Jemma turn and bravely face her own death, but yet there she was, warm and solid and real, sleeping on a bed in the med pod. He knew, logically, that they were both the same person, but he was having trouble reconciling them in his mind. Maybe it was his way of coping - if he thought of older and younger Jemma as two separate people, maybe then he wouldn't feel like he'd betrayed her by being forced to leave her behind.

But it was a big _maybe_.

He sighed and shifted in his chair, watching Jemma as she slept. It was the first opportunity he'd had to look at her, _really_ look at her, in months. Before, he'd tried everything he could _not_ to look at her, or he found reasons not to. As much as it was a relief to be able to look at her without fear of awkwardness or pain, he wasn't sure he liked what he saw. Her sleep wasn't restful. Her eyebrows were knitted together, and in addition to the cuts and bruises on the side of her face, there were dark circles beneath her eyes. She looked like she'd lost weight as well. Fitz wondered if it was a product of her time in the other dimension, or if she'd been unwell even before she fell through the portal. She'd acted just fine every time he'd seen and spoken to her, always projecting a cheeriness that never failed to infuriate him. He'd taken it as proof that he'd never meant as much to her as she had to him, how she'd been able to effortlessly separate herself from him and continue on with life as if the med pod had never happened.

The only times he'd ever seen her upset had been right after she'd come back from being undercover, and on the Quinjet in San Juan. That, coupled with everything he'd seen and experienced in the past day, had sent his entire perception of her post-med pod cartwheeling into unsurety.

If he'd missed the signs that Jemma wasn't well, what else had he missed?

He wasn't sure how much time had passed before Jemma finally stirred, mumbling under her breath as she turned her head toward him. When she opened her eyes, he was waiting with a tentative smile.

"Fitz," she murmured, shifting a little. "We made it?"

He nodded, his lips quirking a bit. "Yeah. We're - we're headed back to the base now." His fingers itched to hold hers.

Jemma smiled slowly back, and Fitz felt a rush of affection for her. It had been so long since he'd seen a real smile from her; today was proving to be a good day for them. She took a deep breath, blinking away the last of the sleep from her eyes, then looked around to take in her surroundings. When she made to sit up, Fitz rushed to adjust the bed for her so she could recline against the pillow while propped up. She said a quiet "thank you", her hand brushing against his arm, and he nodded an awkward "you're welcome" before sitting back down.

"Other me?" she asked once she was settled. "Where is she?"

Fitz looked down, afraid of her reaction. He'd known he would have to answer this question, but that didn't make it any easier. "The paradox didn't hold," he said after a moment. "It - she - she couldn't come through the portal." He left the rest unspoken, knowing Jemma could fill in the blanks herself.

"Oh." Jemma's voice sounded strange, a bit high-pitched and choked, and it was enough to make Fitz look back up at her. She was frowning, staring at her hands in her lap. "I - I feel like I should feel something," she said quietly. "Because she was _me_ and she...died. But - I'm not sure what to feel. I don't know what to make of it." She cut her eyes over to him. "Is that wrong of me?"

Fitz shrugged lightly. "In all hon - well...no." He gave her a wry, faint smile. "I don't know what to think either."

"Oh," she said again.

"But I'm glad I got you," he added hastily. "At least. I mean - I - I'm glad _we_ were able to - bring you back. That was…" He looked back down, scratching at the skin just behind his ear. "That was all I wanted. Yeah."

He could feel Jemma watching him, but when he didn't look back up, she sighed quietly. "It would have been an amazing opportunity to talk with her, though," she said. "Properly. There's so much we could have learned, scientifically. Even if it _would_ have been a bit weird, with her being, well, me and all. But...I'm thankful for her. I'm glad it worked, what the two of you did, pulling me into my own future."

Fitz huffed the softest of laughs. "We got by on, um, a lot of luck."

"Fitz." He saw her hand move toward him from where his gaze was trained on the edge of the bed. "Don't sell yourself short. I know you put a lot of work into everything that was required to get me out of there. Just the tracker alone was amazing, but the way you combined it with the screen and the generator to get a lock on my genetic signature...that was brilliant."

He looked at her then, and her face nearly took his breath away. He'd expected to see a carefully neutral expression there or, even worse, the look that she'd so frequently given him since he woke up from his coma, the one he felt bordered on coddling or patronizing. Instead, his best friend was looking back at him. Jemma's eyes were shining with pride, her lips still curved in a small smile. It was a look that he had taken for granted during all their years together, and one that he hadn't seen in far too long.

It was a moment before Fitz realized that he was staring, mouth hanging slightly open, and he looked quickly back down as heat flooded his face. "I - I had help," he muttered. The rest of the team deserved credit where it was due, but he still couldn't stop himself from thinking that it might have gone quicker, that she might not have been stranded in the other dimension as long, if he didn't have his handicaps.

Jemma was still watching him - he could feel it - and he cast about for something else to say to mask his nervousness. "I'm - I'm curious...what was the thought you picked?" he asked. "For when we brought you forward. I could see you both saying something but, um, I couldn't hear what it was - what you were saying."

She didn't immediately reply. When Fitz looked up again, Jemma had turned her gaze to her hands, which were toying with the hem of her blouse. Her smile had vanished. "You probably won't believe me," she said eventually, her voice small.

A bit bemused, Fitz tilted his head. He thought again about seeing Jemma, both of her, mouthing the same phrase over and over. He had no idea what it could have been, what would be bad enough to make her close back up on him emotionally. "Um - after everything I've seen and, and done in the past day or so...I could believe a lot of things," he said, in an attempt to reassure her.

Jemma frowned, her fingers twisting together in her lap. As the silence drew out between them, she opened her mouth several times as if to speak, but thought better of it each time. Fitz tried to be patient, but he couldn't deny the nervousness that her reticence had settled in the pit of his stomach. Finally, she raised her eyes to his, and they were fearful.

"I said...I…" She hesitated again, her mouth struggling to form the words. "I...love you." Her bottom lip trembled. "I love you, Fitz."

It was as if all of the oxygen had been sucked from the room. Fitz felt a hot shock of _something_ go through him from his head to his feet, but it wasn't elation. It was - disbelief. Jemma had just said the three words he'd longed to hear from her, and it was like his heart had suddenly hollowed out, allowing all his doubts and fears and insecurities to rush in and fill the vacuum. All the reasons why she _couldn't_ love him were drowning out her spoken words.

He shrank away from her in his chair. "No."

Jemma's only reply was to swallow thickly, her eyes pinning him in place. That wouldn't do. Fitz shot to his feet and and took a few steps away, his back to her. "No," he said louder. "You - you don't."

"I don't?" There was an edge to her voice that didn't brook argument, but he couldn't stop. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his fingers against the side of his nose.

"You _can't_," he bit out, moving to pace back and forth in the small space he had. "Not like that. You've never - you - and I -"

"You don't get to tell me how I feel, Fitz," Jemma said, her voice gone low and shaky. He caught a glimpse of her as he paced; her hands were clenched into fists in her lap, knuckles white, and her face was pale, eyes hurt and angry.

The very same emotions were overtaking him. He shook his head again. "But you've never _said_ anything."

"I couldn't!" Jemma cried. "You wouldn't let me! I've tried, _so_ many times, just to - to talk, at all, and then to _tell_ you, but you avoid me or cut me off every time. I tried to tell you in San Juan, but then you -" She cut herself off as her eyes filled with tears. "You left the lab. You gave up on us."

He wheeled around to stare incredulously at her. "I left the lab be-because there was no point in me staying," he said. "I can't - it's - I can't do what I used to, so I'm just - it's a waste. And you - you…" He huffed out a breath, his heart clenching. "You don't want me there, you gave up first -"

"Please, let's not play_ that _game -"

"You _left_, Jemma." Fitz tried to breathe, but his lungs just wouldn't expand. "You couldn't look at me after - after I woke up, you couldn't accept that I'm different, so you_ left _-"

"_Nine days!_" Jemma shouted, stopping him in his tracks. "Nine days you were in a coma! They were the worst nine days of my_ life!_ I didn't know if you would ever wake up, and if you did, what sort of state you would be in. When you did, and I saw how bad the damage was, I -" She looked away and sniffed as the tears in her eyes spilled over. "I knew it was all my fault."

That brought Fitz up short. He frowned in confusion. "Jemma, I don't -"

"It's _my fault_," she repeated, her face crumpling. "If only we'd had more time, I could have found another way, or made_ you_ take the oxygen, or if I'd just swum faster, then maybe you wouldn't -" She choked on a sob. "It could have made a difference. You wouldn't have been hurt, and maybe you wouldn't - hate me."

All of the disbelief and hurt fell away at that, leaving Fitz feeling hollow again, at a loss. She thought his brain damage was _her_ fault? She thought he hated her?

_Well_, a nasty voice in his mind said,_ you haven't exactly given her much reason to think otherwise_.

He'd been so sure she didn't want or need him anymore, and his only (suddenly meager) defense was that she'd acted that part well by going about as if she were just fine - but he was supposed to know better than anyone else that Jemma didn't show her emotions, that she went on autopilot when upset. He thought about how Jemma had trusted him to bring her back from the other dimension, how her older self had _kissed_ him, and what she had said at the portal. _She still needs you. Don't think for one second that she ever stopped._ He thought about how tired and drawn and pale she'd looked lately. He thought of how mere moments ago, she'd looked at him with pride in her eyes.

Suddenly, he felt like a fool. Nothing made sense anymore. "Jemma," he tried again, "I -"

She held up a hand to stop him, tears streaking her cheeks. "Don't. I know it's my fault, all of it. I couldn't fix you, I couldn't make things better, and I...I couldn't even _help_ you. It was second nature for me to finish your sentences, which wasn't helping your recovery at all. You needed to relearn to speak on your own without me interrupting all the time. And you were trying _so_ hard. I - I knew you didn't want to be different. For _me_. And you were just frustrating yourself. All I did was make you worse."

Fitz's mouth worked silently for a second. "You - you didn't make me _worse_, how could you -"

"But I_ did_, Fitz." Jemma looked at him, her eyes begging him to understand. "Everyone could see it. I was blocking your progress. So when Coulson said he needed someone to go undercover, I knew it had to be me. It would take me out of the picture and then you could focus on your recovery without having me as a distraction. I...I truly believed I was doing what was best for you. I had to, or else I never could have done it. Every time I asked while I was gone, Coulson said you were doing just fine. I had to believe that too, because otherwise, what...what was the point? Fitz...I didn't leave because I don't love you. I left because I _do_."

All he could do was stare at her in something like shock and dismay. He couldn't find any words to speak. How could she blame herself for everything? None of it was her fault; he truly believed that. Some of it was down to his own shortcomings, but logically, he knew there was nothing_ to_ blame for most of it. It was just - what happened. It was beyond either of their control. Logically, she had to know that too. And that wasn't even getting into how she believed she had made him worse. He'd only become worse when she left; he'd started _hallucinating_ her, for god's sake. Had Coulson lied to her, told her that he was fine in some attempt to keep her focused?

Would she have asked to come back if she had known just how low he'd sunk?

"But I suppose none of that matters anymore," Jemma said, looking back down and wiping at her cheeks with one hand. "It's too late. I'm - all I ended up doing was hurting you even more. I never meant - and now you - you don't -" The more she spoke, the more difficulty she had getting the words out; her emotions were clearly overwhelming her. It broke Fitz's heart to see her like that, miserable and wretched, and he wanted to comfort her, but he couldn't move. He couldn't do anything.

"That was my thought. That I loved you." She breathed out a broken laugh. "It was something - I knew she would still remember it. It would be important to her. If she really was me - then she would. I was there for a month with nothing but my own thoughts for company. All I could think of was - was how much I loved you and missed you. After twenty-six years...but I'm too late. You - don't -" She closed her eyes and rolled onto her side then, facing away from him, and took a deep, shaky breath. "I think...you should leave."

That was enough to break Fitz from his stupor; he felt like she had just driven a sharp, icy blade into his chest. Was that what he had done to her when he told her he wanted to leave the lab? "Jemma -"

"Please leave," she said, drawing her knees up as more tears slipped down her cheeks.

He couldn't leave her like that. "I -"

"_Please_," she repeated. Her voice was wobbling dangerously.

Fitz hesitated for a moment. The part of him that had been by her side for ten years said that he couldn't leave her, not when she was so obviously hurting, but the fear and the doubt and insecurity that had plagued him ever since his coma told him that _he_ was at fault, that_ he_ had caused her misery, and that he needed to leave. He didn't need to cause any more damage than he already had.

He wanted to say something, anything, but in the end the words still didn't come. Sucking in a breath, he turned and stepped out of the med pod, quietly closing the door behind him. As soon as it clicked shut, he heard her break apart.

The sound of Jemma's wracking sobs followed him all the way upstairs back to the main level of the Bus.

-:-

When they got back to the Playground, Fitz couldn't find Jemma amongst the bustle of people going to and coming from the Bus. He couldn't find her in the lab or the common room either, or her room. He wanted to make things right with her, but he hadn't the faintest clue how to even begin doing that, or what he would even say. His thoughts were still in a whirlwind and he couldn't settle on any one emotion. All he knew was that he had hurt Jemma, and where once he had thought he might have felt vindicated - that she should feel even an ounce of the same pain he did - all he felt was heavy guilt.

Eventually he had to go do his debrief with Coulson. Some of the details of the mission were hard to share, despite knowing that the team had seen and heard everything via his glasses. They just felt very personal - from the way he had nearly self-destructed when Jemma had first fallen through the portal, to convincing older Jemma to help, to the kiss she'd given him and their final conversation. It felt like putting the darkest corners of his personal life on display, and it left him feeling tetchy.

He didn't tell Coulson about the memory Jemma had used. That was her story to tell, if she wanted to, and he still wasn't sure his mouth could form the words anyway.

When he was done, he hesitated in the door. "Sir...have you seen Jem-Simmons? Since we got back?"

Coulson gave him a look that was hard to read. "She gave her debrief as soon as we landed. Then I suggested she get some rest."

Fitz pursed his lips. "Ah. I - I see. Um...thanks."

He went by her room again and knocked on the door, but no one answered. She still wasn't in the lab, or any of the other usual places everyone gathered. The best he could guess was that she was in her room, but ignoring him. Feeling rotten, he walked to the kitchen and went through the motions of making tea.

He was sitting at the table, hands wrapped loosely around his mug and staring at nothing, when Skye came in. She did a double-take when she saw him, and then her expression turned thoroughly unimpressed. Fitz could only guess why.

"You've, um - you've talked to Jemma," he said lamely.

Skye narrowed her eyes at him before turning to the fridge to open it and pull out a bottle of water. "I don't know what you did," she said, "but you're an idiot."

Fitz felt a protest bubbling up in his throat as the instinctive need to defend himself arose, but he managed to swallow it. Instead, he prodded at his tea mug, watching steam rise off the hot liquid, and said nothing.

Skye grabbed a banana from a bowl on the counter before turning back to face him. "She was alone and crying her eyes out when we landed, but she wouldn't tell me why. She was a _mess_. I had to help her calm down so she could go do her debrief with AC, but...I have never seen her like that, ever. You were the only one down there with her...what happened?" Her expression turned concerned. "Because you don't look so great either. You didn't...fight or anything, did you?"

There was a part of him that was annoyed that Skye automatically assumed Jemma had been crying because of something he had had done, instead of anything else - like fallout from being stranded alone in a hostile environment for a month, perhaps. He couldn't get much feeling behind it, though, because he knew it _was_ his fault. "Um. She -" He didn't know how much he wanted to say. If the details of the mission had been personal, this was even more so. "She was...very honest about some - things." He swallowed. "About _why_ she left to - to go undercover."

He felt Skye study him for a moment. "I haven't forgotten what I asked you," she said, "when Hunter said you thought she'd left because she didn't care about you. Is...is that really what you think?"

Fitz prodded at his mug again. He didn't feel much like drinking his tea anymore. "I don't...really see any other reason why - why she would have," he mumbled, even as Jemma's words in the med pod bounced uncomfortably around his head. It wasn't that he doubted her sincerity; it was that things tended to become true if you told yourself them enough, and he'd had a long time to think that she'd left because she didn't want him anymore, in any capacity. "She - she saw the damage and...it was too much. She didn't, um - I was useless. _Am_ useless."

Skye stared at him for another moment before she sighed and came to set her water and banana down on the table, taking the seat across from him. There was another pause where she seemed to be weighing her thoughts; then she looked him in the eye. "Fitz...when you were in that coma, Simmons didn't leave your side," she said. "Not once. We had to bring her food. She slept in a chair until Trip convinced AC to let him bring in a cot for her. We couldn't even get her away for a shower. Just using the sink in your room gave her a panic attack." Skye's eyes had taken on a faraway look, as if she were reliving the memories in her head. "And when she wasn't asleep, she was doing research. Reading. Anything she could do to learn about what had happened to you and how we could help you when you woke up. And, the whole time...I never saw her cry or get upset." She frowned. "She was like a statue. Just - so _focused_. She was like, literally living and breathing just to help you get better."

_They were the worst nine days of my life_. Jemma's voice echoed in Fitz's mind. He could imagine how she must have looked, folded into a chair at his bedside, tired and pale, going through article after article on a tablet. He could see it, because he knew if their positions had been reversed, he would have done the exact same thing.

"I don't know how much you remember from when you woke up." Skye was turning her water bottle in little circles on the table with her fingers. "She did everything she could. But...after awhile, it was -" She huffed out a breath. "I don't even know how to say it. She helped so much it stopped working."

When Fitz looked up at her long enough to furrow his brow in confusion, Skye's mouth twisted unhappily. "She kept finishing your sentences the way she used to, and it - I remember it got to a point where you barely talked at all, and just had her talk for you. And get things for you, that sort of stuff. And that wasn't good. At all. She told me once that she was worried she was hurting you worse than she was helping, and...it hurt to admit it, but she was right." She sighed again. "What I'm trying to say, Fitz, is that the absolute last thing Simmons wanted to do was leave you. I mean, she never _told_ me that, but she didn't have to. It was obvious. All she cared about was helping you get better."

It was true that Fitz didn't remember much from the first few days after he woke up. Jemma was already wearing her too-bright smile to go with her too-cheerful voice by the time he could piece any concrete memories together. He turned Skye's words over in his head and had the vague thought that nothing she had said was contradicting what Jemma had told him. Once again, he was forced to reconsider his version of events, the way everything had played out in his mind. There still was one thing that remained, though. "She could have - at least told me where she was going."

Skye shook her head. "For what it's worth? She lied to me too. The only people who knew where she really was, were May and Coulson." She finally unscrewed the top off her water bottle and took a sip. "Trip and I thought she'd bailed on you, too."

Fitz's eyes snapped up. Skye was wincing guiltily at him. "Yeah, I know. It just - it seemed so _wrong_, after all she'd done for you here," she said. "But when we found out what she was really doing, we understood. She left so you could have room to heal. But...that didn't work either."

He looked back down at his tea then. He didn't like reminders of him at his lowest, of how he'd needed Jemma with him so badly that his mind had created a substitute out of thin air. "She said...she said that Coulson told her that - I was fine," he said quietly. "When she was with Hydra."

Skye's eyebrows quirked sharply as she took another drink of her water. "That...doesn't surprise me."

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Skye peeled her banana and took a few bites, and Fitz finally sipped at his tea, which had gone lukewarm. He'd put in too much sugar.

"Okay, here's the important part," Skye said suddenly, swallowing a bite of banana. "I know I probably won't ever know Simmons as well as you do, but I know her well enough to know that she's been doing the Simmons thing. You know, the - the stiff upper lip. Where she acts like she's fine and does her job because we all need her to. But...we've just been so busy. Everything's been crazy. We had you to worry about, then Hydra, then the obelisk, and - and Trip - and I feel like a really shitty friend now. We've been so busy for so long, and so focused on getting _you_ better, that we never asked if _she_ was okay." Her shoulders slumped. "I think this is probably the first time she's cried or let loose or _anything_ since your accident."

Fitz frowned. Skye was definitely right on one thing, and it tied back into his earlier thoughts while Jemma had been sleeping - Jemma didn't show her emotions often, especially if she was upset. She'd always been that way, for as long as he'd known her, and it had taken a long time for her to feel comfortable enough even with him to show how she felt. He thought once again about how he'd been so convinced that she'd been just fine after the accident, that she could go on like nothing had happened, and he felt like an idiot. Of course she hadn't been fine. Of course she'd been hiding it. And he, as damaged and fragile as he'd been, had taken it at face value.

"You're, um - you're probably right," he mumbled, feeling shame tug at his gut. After a moment, he reached up to rub at his neck. "Um - do you know where she is? I - I can't find her. I wanted…"

He trailed off, because he still wasn't sure what he wanted, aside from erasing the sound of Jemma crying from his ears. Skye seemed to intuit his meaning well enough, though.

"Not since I sent her off to debrief," she said, shaking her head. "But she's probably in her room, asleep or something."

"Yeah, I...I tried there. She didn't answer." Fitz considered the idea that Jemma was too angry or upset to talk to him, and figured that maybe he deserved it. Pushing back from the table, he stood and went to carry his full mug over to the sink. Skye watched him go. "I'm going to, um, go get some rest," he said. He dumped his tea down the drain and rinsed his mug before setting it aside to dry.

"Fitz." He stopped, and turned to look at Skye again. She had swiveled in her seat to face him. "Look, I know things have been...not good between you two. And, I know, it's none of my business. But you were together for _ten years_. I've never seen anything like what you guys had. It's…" She shook her head. "I think it's still there. I could see it, in that cave. You guys just have to..._talk_, okay? Really talk. Talk from here." She thumped her knuckles against her chest. "Not here." Then pointed to her head. "I know that might be hard for a bunch of science nerds, but at least try."

Fitz couldn't help the way his mouth twitched at her attempt at humor, paltry though it might have been. She smiled slightly back, then shooed him away with her hands. "Go on, go sleep. I know you've got to be tired."

He nodded before leaving the kitchen and then headed for his room. But when he reached the door, he kept walking past it. He tried Jemma's again - still no answer - and went past the lab again, just to find it still empty. After that, he started wandering, his feet taking him aimlessly around the base.

He knew he'd been awake for at least thirty hours and desperately needed sleep, but his mind wouldn't let him rest. He couldn't get Jemma's voice out of his head. She'd said she loved him, and she'd looked so frightened, afraid he wouldn't believe her. And she'd been right.

He thought about how he'd immediately denied her. There were so many reasons why she couldn't and shouldn't love him, but when he forced himself to think about them critically, he realized most of them were excuses on his part rather than anything Jemma had actually said or done. They were walls he'd built up around himself to keep from getting hurt even more, but he'd never given her a chance. They were things he'd assumed she felt, but he'd never let her speak. He'd been so absorbed in his own frustrations and misery that he'd thought the worst of everything she did.

He thought of how she'd brought him tea when she'd first returned from Hydra, and how she'd tried to engage him in conversations a few times, or asked for his help with a project. At the time he thought she'd been coddling him, tossing him the smallest of scraps because she thought he couldn't handle anything more. Now, he realized she'd likely been trying to reach for him the best way she knew how. And he'd done nothing but push her away.

And then he thought of older Jemma, at the portal. Was that what she had wanted to say, but couldn't?_ I love you._ Even twenty-six years later and knowing she was going to die, she'd still been too afraid to say it.

He needed to find her. It was likely he had done damage that couldn't be undone, but he needed to set the record straight at least. Jemma needed to know that he had never hated her, that he didn't blame for her anything, and that he still loved her despite everything.

His thoughts somewhat settled, he looked up to see that he was in the hangar, at the bottom of the ramp leading up into the Bus. The interior was mostly dark but he walked up the ramp anyway, drawn towards where the lab used to be. The walls were lined with boxes and crates now, but if he concentrated he could still see it as it used to be. There were the glass doors, and his workstation just behind it. There were the tables covered in samples and equipment, and the holotable just beyond them. There was the large screen on the back wall. And there they were - him and Jemma, moving easily around each other, hands gesturing as they solved yet another puzzle. He could almost hear her laugh, the way her voice would go stern - yet still fond - as she admonished him for some real or imagined lab etiquette trespass.

It made his heart ache. He wondered if they could ever be that way again.

He had just reached the center of the room when he heard a sharp gasp to his right. Startled, he jumped and spun - only to see Jemma, nearly hidden from sight by a large stack of crates, huddled against the wall with her knees drawn up to her chest.

"Oh - I - sorry, I um - I didn't…" Fitz trailed off as he looked at her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, her skin bone-white. She looked exhausted. His heart clenched in his chest:_ he_ was responsible for this.

Jemma had looked up at him at first, but then her gaze had dropped to somewhere around his knees. She didn't say anything for a moment, just blinked and swallowed. Then, hesitantly: "I was thinking about our lab. We…I was happy here."

Fitz looked around the room again, still imagining the tables and equipment, and their laughter. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I - I was too." He hadn't missed the way she'd corrected herself. She needed to know that he'd been happy too. He turned back to her. "Look, Jemma…"

She held up a hand and squeezed her eyes shut. "Don't," she said, her voice cracking. "Please. I can't bear it."

His stomach twisted, and when he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper. "Jemma, please."

She took a deep breath but didn't say anything. Instead, she looked as if she was bracing for some kind of physical blow. It broke his heart.

"I...I never meant for you to think th-that I - hated you. Because I don't." He sighed softly. "I hate myself."

Jemma finally looked up at him then, frowning, her fingers curling where they rested on her knees.

"It's just - I don't have the, um, the words for anything anymore, and - even though I can _see_ it - I can't - and my hands aren't good. I feel like a burden, like, like everyone just feels sorry for me. I - I feel useless." He tried not to let it happen, but just speaking about the things he could no longer do made his depression swell like a wave within him. "My...my brain was the best thing a-about me. Now that it's damaged...what good am I?"

Jemma's eyes were glassy. "You know that's not _you_, right?" she asked quietly. "It's not because you yourself are lacking. It's the aphasia. If you just give it time, and keep up with your therapy -"

"Yes, I know, I _know_, but it's not -" Fitz stopped, wincing, when he realized how snappish he sounded, and that Jemma's mouth had clicked shut as she folded in even more on herself. He forced himself to relax, then gestured at the empty space on the floor next to her. "Can I -?"

When she nodded slightly, he stepped forward and lowered himself to sit down next to her, careful to keep a little bit of space between them, but not so much that it would make him look distant. He stretched out his legs in front of him and leaned back against the wall. "I don't hate you, Jemma," he repeated softly, after gathering his thoughts. "I never have. And I - I don't blame you for this, either." He pointed to his head.

In his periphery, he saw Jemma wrap her arms tighter around her knees. "Why?" she whispered.

He frowned. It still baffled him that she blamed herself, and he wasn't sure how he could convince her that she wasn't at fault. "I made my decision," he said, rolling his head to the side to look at her. "I - I knew what I was doing. You didn't t-take the oxygen from me - I _gave_ it to you. I...I ex - I thought I would die." He shrugged slightly. "But I was fine with it. As long as - as you lived."

Jemma's throat bobbed as she swallowed, her eyes still trained straight ahead on the floor. "I was so _angry_ with you," she murmured, "at first. That you made me take the oxygen, and that you expected me to leave you behind. That you thought so little of me, to think that I even _would_."

Fitz sucked in a breath. "I didn't -"

"I meant what I said," she said, cutting him off. "I couldn't live if you didn't. And I was angry that you tried to force me to. But more than that...I just wanted you to wake up. I didn't care what the consequences were, or how severe your injuries might be. I just wanted you alive, next to me." Her voice had dropped back down to a near-whisper, her shoulders slumping. "Maybe that was selfish of me."

He'd never really thought of it that way before. Of course he'd known that she would grieve, and miss him, but everything had been so rushed and he'd been so desperate to save her that he hadn't thought much beyond _get Jemma to safety_. For the first time, he tried to put himself in her shoes - to imagine how he would feel if Jemma had taken his choices away and all but demanded he leave her there at the bottom of the ocean. He imagined having no time at all to process the idea of a life without her. It made his stomach turn.

"Maybe it was selfish of _me_," he said quietly. "To - to put all of that on you."

Jemma shook her head. "I didn't even think of how it would affect you. I never considered what being injured would _do_ to you."

Fitz shifted a little. "I didn't really give you any time to."

She was quiet again for another moment. The silence between them still felt strained, but it was different. Lesser, perhaps. He didn't feel like he was choking on it. They were finally having some semblance of a real conversation and, no matter how painful it was, the honesty was good for both of them. They were taking tentative steps forward together, back towards each other.

Jemma's head dipped a little. "Do you ever wish I hadn't? Pulled you up with me, I mean."

He swallowed and dropped his eyes from her. The words were there, but they were difficult to say. "Sometimes," he admitted quietly.

She gasped, and Fitz looked up to see her squeezing her eyes shut in pain and leaning away from him. Without thinking, his hands shot out to grab hers and pull them to him. "No - Jemma," he said in a rush, "no - that - that's not on you. That's me. It's just me feeling sorry for myself."

Jemma had shifted her legs out to the side when he'd taken her hands in his, but she still wouldn't look at him. "I can't bear the thought of you wishing you were dead rather than being like this," she said, her voice thick. She was crying again. "Because _I _did this to you."

Fitz thought it would probably take a long time to convince Jemma that he didn't blame her for his condition. "No you didn't." He let go of one of her hands to reach up and hesitantly slide his along her cheek, brushing a tear away with his thumb. "I promise." She leaned her head into his touch, and his heart twisted; but she refused to open her eyes and look at him. "Jem, please," he said softly. "Come here." And he opened his arms to her in invitation.

Her eyes opened and darted to his for the briefest of seconds; then she was shifting over to curl carefully against his side. Fitz let his arms wrap around her shoulders and drew her closer to him, until her forehead settled in the crook of his neck. There was a long pause before he felt her begin to relax against him, and when she did he leaned his cheek against her hair, sighing as his eyes fell shut. A wave of intense emotion washed over him. Never in his life had he ever felt such a strong sense of _home_-of finally being exactly where he was meant to be after a long time wandering lost. They were far from being fixed, but this - offering himself, and her accepting - was tremendous.

"I'm sorry," Jemma whispered. She'd slid an arm around his waist, and the weight and warmth of her against him was comforting in ways he couldn't express. "I'm sorry I left. I mean - I'm not, because you _did_ get better while I was gone, but - I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm so sorry. I never meant to. I don't think I'll ever be able to apologize enough."

"Shh, it's okay." Fitz was having to blink back tears of his own, and it was all he could do not to turn his face and drop a kiss against her hair. Instead, he settled for rubbing circles into her shoulder with his thumbs. "I'm sorry too. I'm sorry for - for being an arse and pushing you away." He paused, considering his next words. "I'm..I'm still angry that you l-left and didn't tell me why -"

Jemma went stiff and tensed up, exhaling a sharp breath against his neck, but he squeezed his arms even tighter around her and rubbed a hand up and down her arm until she relaxed again.

"Yeah. I'm angry. But - I think I understand why you left," he said. "And I - I forgive you. It'll just...take some time. I'm sorry."

She shook her head and tightened her hold on his waist. "Don't be sorry. I'm not sure I deserve your forgiveness...but thank you." She sighed. "You were wrong earlier, you know."

"Hmm?"

"Your brain isn't the best part of you." She brought her hand up to rest on his chest, next to her face. "Though it's close. It's your heart."

Fitz huffed a small laugh at that, feeling a genuine mix of happiness and amusement bloom in his chest. "I'm going to, um, remember that the - the next time I ask for a monkey assistant and - and you roll your eyes at me. See how much you like my heart _then_."

Jemma's shoulders shook slightly as she laughed too. "Fitz - are you teasing me?"

They were rusty, the easy push-and-pull of their old banter stilted with disuse, but it felt good to finally laugh, and laugh with her. It didn't matter if his voice was hesitant, or that hers was still a little hollow. It was something. Fitz smiled a little. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am."

She squeezed her arm around his waist again and shifted even closer to him, the fingers of her hand on his chest curling in. After a moment, she asked, "Are we going to be okay?"

Her voice was quiet and solemn again, still a little fearful. Fitz couldn't stop himself from kissing her hair then, no more than he could stop himself from breathing. "Yeah," he said again, and he meant it. "I think we can be."

It would take work. There would likely be missteps along the way, bumps in the road and things they couldn't avoid. But if they kept talking - _really_ talking, like Skye meant - and tried their best to be open and honest with one another, he believed they could be. They _would_ be. He knew he was willing to put everything he had into it, and now he knew Jemma was too. _Better together_, they had always said. They always would be.

It took Fitz a few moments of almost peaceful silence between them to work up the nerve to say what he wanted to next. "What you said earlier in the med pod...you - you really meant it?" He knew what she would say - but perhaps he just needed to hear it one more time, to confirm it.

There was another pause before Jemma answered him. "With all my heart," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

Fitz closed his eyes as he let her words sink in. He didn't feel any disbelief or hurt or anger like he had before. This time, there was a burning warmth in his chest, a quickening of his heart, a slight heady rush of joy. The sense of _home_ he'd had before intensified. That was it for him, he realized. He was hers, for the rest of his life.

Maybe that was what being in love really felt like.

He swallowed several times. "I love you too," he said quietly.

Jemma's breath hitched. "Still?" she breathed, as if she believed he could ever do otherwise.

He smiled faintly where she couldn't see. "Always."

She sat up then, pulling away just enough to be able to look into his eyes. It nearly startled him, seeing her face so close to his-they were centimeters apart, close enough for their breath to mingle, for their noses to almost touch - but she stilled him by lifting a hand to him, her fingertips brushing down his cheek to his jaw. His breath caught in his throat. She looked like a wreck, but Fitz still had never seen anything more beautiful.

He realized she was shaking right before she leaned forward and kissed him, her lips so feather-light on his he was almost sure he was dreaming it. There was a burst of tingles where they met - not too unlike going through the portal - and before Jemma could pull away, he reached up to catch her shoulder and tug gently before kissing her back, just as light.

It was careful, soft and hesitant. It was tentative, almost shy, two frightened and damaged people learning to trust one another again. It was finally crossing over the line to something more, hands held tightly, unsure of what the future would bring but knowing they would face it together. Time slipped away from them as they relaxed into each other, mouths meeting and seeking and parting, their kisses light and gentle but never demanding. It was enough to lull Fitz into a daze where the world narrowed down to just him and Jemma and the miracle of her lips pressed against his, of the way she sighed into him and the way she curled her hand around the back of his neck as if she were afraid he would break.

When he felt Jemma start to sag against him, Fitz remembered the bone-deep exhaustion that had been threatening to overtake him before he found her, and he pulled back. Eyes still closed, Jemma's head tipped towards him, and he caught her with the softest of laughs. If _he_ was tired, surely she was even worse. "Come on, Jemma," he murmured. "Let's get you to bed."

He took her by the shoulders and got to his feet, pulling her with him. Once they were both standing, Jemma swayed slightly and grabbed his elbows. "Sorry, Fitz," she mumbled. "I'm...I can't stay awake."

"It's okay." He kissed her forehead. "Think - um, think you can make it back to your room?"

She nodded, blinking her eyes open, and together they left the Bus. Fitz kept an arm around her as they walked, tucking her into his side, hands grasping her shoulders. Mostly, it was to help keep her upright, but he also wasn't eager to let her go, not after the strides forward they'd just made together.

As they turned onto the hall where all their rooms were, Fitz saw May at the far end, about to go into her own room. His steps faltered when she looked up and their eyes met. She looked from him to Jemma, and then at his arm around her, and something he couldn't quite read flickered across her face. He swallowed and looked down, hurrying Jemma toward her door. He couldn't face May, not after the portal, and he didn't know how long it would be before he could again. He understood what she had done and why, but it still didn't change the fact that she had forced him to abandon older Jemma.

Fitz got the door to Jemma's room open and guided her inside. "Okay, here we are," he said quietly, stopping next to her bed. Then he was at a loss for what to do. Jemma needed rest, and so did he - but he was still loathe to leave her. "Do - do you think you can get changed?"

"Yes." Jemma smothered a yawn behind one hand, then looked at him with eyes filled with such sudden longing that it made something catch in his chest. "Stay?" she asked. Then, just as quickly, she was visibly trying to calm herself - she was still afraid to let him see her feelings. "Please."

He wondered how long it would take for her to feel comfortable with him again. It didn't really matter, though. He would wait forever if he had to. Stepping forward, he gave her a soft, lingering kiss. "Of - of - sure." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Just give me a minute, yeah?"

He escaped down the hall to his own room then, shedding his clothes in favor of his pajamas. He needed a shower, but he was tired more than that; he could get one in the morning. Or the afternoon, whenever he woke up. He had the feeling he was going to be sleeping for a long time.

Once he was done, Fitz looked both ways down the hall before rushing back to Jemma's room. He wasn't necessarily worried about anyone seeing him coming or going from her room, but if he had to choose, he'd always pick the option that invited the least gossip. When he got the door closed behind him, he turned and blinked into the darkness, letting his eyes adjust. Jemma hadn't left a lamp on. He finally picked her out, a lump on the bed already huddled beneath the blankets.

"Hey," he whispered, moving carefully toward her. "I'm here."

Jemma made a pleased noise. Fitz went around to the side of the bed that she'd left empty for him, and - after a moment's hesitation - crawled into the bed next to her.

His heart twisted with a bittersweet ache as he shifted over to curl up behind her and she wriggled to fit herself snugly against him, her back to his front. They'd shared a bed occasionally while at the Academy and then SciOps, and even a few times on the Bus, but it had been far too long. Being allowed into Jemma's space like that, after everything they had gone through, was a privilege. One that he hoped she would let him use often, now.

He slid his arm over her waist and she caught his hand, pulling it up to rest just beneath her breasts. Then she sighed, and if Fitz wasn't mistaken, it sounded content. "I love you," she murmured, her voice thick with sleep.

His heart pulsed brightly, one heavy thud to sound out just how much he loved her in return. He pressed a kiss to the back of her shoulder, then rested his forehead there. "Love you too, Jem," he whispered back. "Rest now. I - I've got you."

Jemma's breathing evened out within minutes, the slight rise and fall of her chest beneath his hand pulling him down into sleep not long afterward. He already knew that his nightmares wouldn't trouble him tonight, not with Jemma beside him. For the first time in nearly a year, Fitz felt able to fully relax and rest easy. It was the end of a part of their story, he thought, and tomorrow a new one began. The road ahead wouldn't be without its difficulties, but they would face it the way they always had before: together.

Older Jemma had been right. He had been given a second chance with her. Nearly losing her forever to the portal had put things in perspective for him, and the way forward was clear. Tomorrow was the beginning of the rest of their lives, and Fitz didn't plan on wasting a single second of it.

-:-

**And here we are, finally at the end! Thank you all so much for reading and for all of your comments and support. I hope you've enjoyed the ride. I certainly enjoyed writing it! As always, huge thanks to my betas notapepper and StarryDreamer01 for all of their help. Without them, this story would be rubbish.**


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